


Georgie and The Clown

by MantisandtheMoonDragon



Series: Commit To The Bit [1]
Category: IT (2017), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Bonding, But Part of It Anyway, Corny and Cheesy AF, Drabbles, Everybody Lives, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Georgie and Pennywise are BFFs, Good!Pennywise AU, Monsters with Soft Spots, Mystery Kids, Not-Quite CTTB Compliant, OOC, Say Hello to my Non-Canon Brain, The Kids Befriend The Monster, Title Based on Mina and The Count, ongoing, prompts from tumblr, to the extreme
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-02
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2019-01-08 00:28:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 34
Words: 30,120
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12243567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MantisandtheMoonDragon/pseuds/MantisandtheMoonDragon
Summary: A Collection of Drabbles based on Prompts given to me on Tumblr where Pennywise is a friendly monster. It's as saccharine as you'd expect.





	1. Prompt: Georgie Had a Bad Day

**Author's Note:**

> So, I was going to post another chapter for Commit to the Bit today, but I've been feeling quite sick as of late. I hope to finish it tomorrow, but until then I thought that I should get all these prompts together and post them for people to see/read if you don't have a tumblr or don't want to go looking through mine to find them. 
> 
> IF anyone likes these and wants to send some more prompts to me, I'm always and forever happy to fulfill them. If you don't mind that it may take a little bit of time for me to finish them, of course. 
> 
> You can reach my inbox here, or you can send me an ask @ mantisandthemoondragon.tumblr.com!

### Prompt: Georgie had a bad day so Pennywise starts bringing in the random toys he's collected over the years to try and cheer him up. 

* * *

 

A child as young as Georgie Denbrough wasn’t worried about crying for no reason. Unless his father told him to stop crying sternly, or Billy made that puckered face that was his best way of communicating distaste for a whining little brother. 

So he didn’t browbeat himself when all at once, the fear that he would never get back to the surface and the exhaustion of maintaining corporeal form (whatever _that_ was) and the little moments of pain from the bridge between mind and reality appeared and he cried. Georgie couldn’t put it into words the moment it happened, but the startled jingling of bells and those concerned green-blue eyes glowing at him from the dark let Georgie know that it was sudden and daunting. 

“I wa-want to go home.” Georgie cried, curling in on himself until he made himself into a little ball, made smaller in the dark of the underground that Pennywise couldn’t hope to erase no matter how hard he tried. 

Pennywise took to wringing his hands nervously, completely attune to the child’s misery. The tangible weight of it made the clown’s appearance wilt and discolor. It didn’t smell or taste or feel nice, not at all. 

“Oh, oh.” Gloved hands fidgeted as Pennywise broke away from his perch on the opposite side of the boy and looked for something to distract him. “Do you want this? You can have it, Georgie. Here. I don’t mind!” 

The clown placed a rocking horse in front of the slowly caving child, but got no real response. The crying and the sad, wounded animal-like noises were _hurting_ Pennywise too, and didn’t sound as though they would taper off any time soon.

“We can share.” He said, trying a hula hoop next. He placed dozens of things at the boy’s feet like a loyal pet, things that were large like an oversized stuffed rabbit or small like play-money, pretend coins. It didn’t matter whether it was shiny or still soft and fluffy, or if the colorful xylophone that Pennywise had just discovered yesterday made pretty sounds when you struck it. 

He wadded through the water, downtrodden and unable to think as the soles of his shoes squeaked and chimed while he walked.    

Georgie did manage to laugh at the squeaking, a little - a hiccupy, watery giggle that bubbled from his mouth then transformed into another sobbing fit. 

“A-” Pennywise nodded, resorting. “A balloon?” 

He thought he saw Georgie nod, and if it would get Georgie to stop crying then Pennywise would do it. Making a pretty balloon appear out of nowhere wasn’t too strenuous anyway, when it made Georgie beam so brightly and look at him with such awe.

Pennywise smiled while he splayed his enormous hand out in front of the boy to keep his attention, like a good magician would. 

“How about we try and make it like an animal, this time?” The clown asked. “I’ve been practicing!”

Think it and it’d be real, that’s all Pennywise had to do as he got ready, imagination already forming, before he was stopped short. 

Gloved fingers stopped midway through the air as Pennywise froze, uncomfortable in the sense that no one had touched him directly and with care or need before. His existence was older than time itself, and yet he’d never experienced _this_ before now. 

The little boy wasn’t phased by his friend’s standoffishness as he brought the clown’s hand closer, tugged him forward until Georgie could wrap both his frail and thin arms around Pennywise’s limb and embrace it. The whimpering was getting softer, as Georgie coddled the hand like it was one of his stuffed animals or as if he were hugging Bill before running after the boat they’d made together. 

Tears rolled down his round face and splashed on the damp, cold ground. It took the clown a while, but Pennywise eventually crouched down and swept Georgie in for a hug, grateful that the human child was patient enough to show him how it was done. 

And the trove of toys were forgotten, discarded in the loose, grey water.  


	2. Pennywise is a Doll

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Pennywise is a doll to others, but an imaginary friend to Georgie.

Thankfully, they hadn’t moved away from Derry, just to a different part of it. Bill and Georgie were closer to school this way, and the neighborhood was much nicer. Their mother had said so like it was the most interesting, most entertaining part of being displaced from one home to the next. 

What kind of kid cared about how nice the neighbors were, anyhow? 

“W-why do you have so many st-stuffed animals, anyway?” Bill asked before throwing a fuzzy lion toy across the room. He watched it land on the shelf opposite of Georgie’s bed, on top of some old kindergarten books they’d taken from a book swap last year. 

“I like ‘em.” Georgie exclaimed happily. “Mom likes ‘em too!” 

“Yeah, that’s s-s-something to be proud of.” Bill rolled his eyes. His remarks would go over his six-year-old brother’s head, or at least they wouldn’t hurt Georgie like an actual insult might sting. The kid was still lallygagging most of the time, regardless of his insistence that he was a big boy starting the First Grade. 

“I guess they’re better then th-the doll.” Bill teased after a bit of silence, in which he took out everything from one of the few boxes still packed up in the younger boy’s new room. 

He held a grinning, plastic (or porcelain?) doll in one hand - a small thing that was too bulky to be an action figure. It’s long legs dangled from Bill’s grasp, the bells on its complex red shoes clinking as he moved it about.  

Georgie glared. “It’s not a doll, Bill.” 

“W-well what do you call it, then?” 

Georgie sighed, looking like the spitting-image of their mother whenever she had to deal with them while exasperated. He shook his head at the ground in disappointment before walking away from his half-finished box to snatch the smiling doll from Bill. 

“He’s my friend.” Georgie said, resting the clown doll atop his forearm so that it had a seat while the sandy-haired boy shuffled around the room. “Friends have names. You don’t call Stan ‘boy’, or Richie or Mike either! His name is Pennywise.” 

Bill’s face scrunched, eyes crinkling near the edges as he sounded the name out in his head. He leaned against the bedpost, trying to make sense of Georgie’s mind as best he could. 

“And we like the same stuff, too! He makes all kinds of things appear, Billy! Remember yesterday when we couldn’t go get popcorn? Pennywise made some out of nowhere to cheer me up!” Georgie bounced on his feet. “I bet my old room is filled with mountains of popcorn still!” 

Bill’s eyebrows rose, the flicker of a memory stalling him before he had a chance to stand up straight again wherein Bill remembered the smell of popcorn in a dream the night before. That was just a dream, though. 

He sighed, tired of humoring his little brother for the moment. Bill decided he’d go downstairs and see if Dad’s study was done yet. 

“Well, whatever. J-just don’t bring it in my room, okay? It’s cr-creepy-y.” 

“ **Pennywise** is creepy…” Georgie corrected him, petting Pennywise’s orange hair down at the sides carefully. In an instant, Georgie’s little face turned red with indignant anger even after the door clicked shut. 

“He’s not creepy, Bill!” 

* * *

It was time for dinner when Bill returned to his brother’s room, and he was poised to burst in without the decency of knocking (he was 13 going on 14, not 40) before flickers of light caught his attention. 

The door was already open enough, and Bill could see his brother still ruffling the weird clown doll’s drab clothes on the side of his bed. He was perfectly content, so caught up in his own little world that Bill smirked. It would be easy to scare Georgie. It was always easy with how out-of-touch he usually was. 

Bill got down on his hands and knees outside the door, debating on whether he should be stealthy or just jumpscare his brother like a slasher pro would in the movies. He waited, drumming his fingers against the new floor in thought while Georgie got down from the bed and walked to the opposite wall. Georgie set the clown down and stepped back, which struck Bill as a little funny, and more than a little bit weird, but it didn’t stop his heart like… 

The shadow of his brother stayed the same, but it was the slow transformation of the clown doll’s shadow that floored Bill. He blinked multiple times to make the sight disappear altogether, but the the shadow of the doll had stretched and grown until it was towering above Georgie like a giant. 

“Sh-shadows change all the t-time.” Bill whispered to himself absently. It was the light above Georgie’s bed, playing tricks with the objects in the room. 

The clown’s shadow came alive quickly, like the snap of a beast’s jaws, and very unlike it’s gradual ascension from tiny, floor-dwelling doll to gangly, human-sized being. Bill flinched back as it opened its mouth and revealed cartoonishly sharp teeth against the backdrop of the wall. He heard Georgie giggling and watched while his baby brother hopped over, mimicking the hunched posture of the clown proudly. 

Pennywise’s voice was nasally and high but **real**. “Wha’do we do today, captain?”    


	3. School is Really Far Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "School is really far away. But, I have to go."

Georgie tried to stifle his giggles, but sometimes the clown was too much. Well, really, the clown was too much all the time. 

He and his unusual new friend sat just outside of one of the larger pipes from the sewer leading out to the canal. They encircled a rock, on top of which sat a half-finished birdcage, and Georgie watched as Pennywise eyed the glue squishing between his long fingers, until his gloves were stuck together. The clown tried to pry his fingers apart but couldn’t, and he whined until Georgie helped him. 

The little boy had been watching a movie with his brother after school one day when Georgie picked up the idea. A girl had left summer camp and had decided to make a birdcage out of popsicle sticks, for her grandmother in the story. After asking Bill about it, Georgie had decided then and there that he wanted to do the exact same thing. The boys didn’t have a bird, and would probably never get one, but there was something about begging for popsicles every time they went grocery shopping and trying to eat as many as they could that riled both children up. 

It was hard work, trying to get enough popsicle sticks to form a basic skeleton for the cage. Georgie had cheated in his endeavors, since he couldn’t finish more than one by himself - and it’d been Pennywise eating them in one bite most of the time. Then again, his extraterrestrial companion seemed to have been even more excited to make the cage than Bill had. 

“Oh no.” Georgie pouted, staring at the beeping watch on his wrist. He’d gotten Bill to set it for him, since the concept of time and how to work the watch still eluded Georgie. 

He looked up at the tree of a clown with a sad face. “I have to go now. School is starting.” 

“School again?” Pennywise copied the child’s expression, though his eyes stilled in opposite directions. It only made the creature look sadder, more pitiful. “But you went to school yesterday!” 

Georgie shrugged, standing up in the ankle-deep water that was more knee-deep for him. “I have school almost every day.” 

“And it takes forever.” His friend replied. Pennywise’s lips pressed together as much as he looked entirely too crestfallen. He looked hurt when Georgie lifted the birdcage from the rock and held it close, having been in the middle of (trying) gluing another stick on the side. 

“And it’s so far away…” School was a pain, but if it were possible to feel twice as bad about having to go because of Pennywise, then Georgie did. Who knew when Georgie would be back to visit, since he usually stayed at home after it was over as well. 

“I can’t skip or Mom would have a heart attack.” Georgie reasoned while not entirely sure what the meaning behind his own words was. Bill had said it multiple times, so it had to be a different way of complaining that Mom would be mad. 

“They’re making me. I have to go.” 

The boy shrugged off the clown’s sulking disposition and started to turn around, hoping to ignore how bad he felt. He was going to be late if he tried to explain himself any more. 

Not that he’d get around to it, when Pennywise appeared out of thin air with a pop! right in front of Georgie. It didn’t make the little boy jump like it used to, but he still took a few steps back in surprise. 

Pennywise smiled. “Let me take you there, then!” 

* * *

Georgie wadded into his first grade classroom with a big, bright smile, heedless of the water he tracked with every footstep. It’d been out of the question to try keeping his tennis shoes from getting wet while he’d been busy rafting in the Penobscot River. 

Ms. Livingston didn’t seem pleased, though. “Georgie, sweetheart, why are you soaked?” 

“Did it rain while you walked here?” She looked out the window and saw a cloudless blue sky ahead. 

“Nope!” Georgie giggled. “I swam here!” 


	4. Pennywise Helps Eddie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Nice!Pennywise helps Eddie with his germaphobia.

His skin was getting thinner. 

Eddie didn’t know if that were possible, but he acted like it was the truth regardless. If he was sure about anything, it was that Richie would never let him hear the end of it if he was wrong. So, he complained about the sewers instead, bemoaning how the system was filled with piss and shit and about having to spin around on the rope leading from the well up to the barely dusted 29 Neibolt House. 

All the dirty grime that Eddie had to endure was enough for him to complain about for years to come, and yet he still went along with it like the rest of the losers in their titular club ( “Ha ha, tit-ular.” “Shut. the. fuck. up. Richie.”). They thought it was a game, when Eddie still had to go home to a worked up mother who made him shower every single day, twice a day, and who helped him pack at least four bottles of hand-sanitizer while praising its quality for cleanliness. 

Eddie couldn’t remember when he’d first become scared of contracting flesh-eating disease from going near the garbage disposal, but he was very aware of how his fingers were constantly pruned _now._  

The clown, or whatever it was that dressed itself up like a clown and that Eddie guessed was his friend though it’d never said as much, singled him out as he fumbled for a bottle while the rest of them played hide-and-seek on creaking floorboards and in dusty nooks and crannies in 29 Neibolt. It had singled Eddie out, and not the other way around despite Eddie deciding to hide in the same fridge downstairs. They were both cooped up tight, and it was hell trying to get his hand out of the uncomfortable position it was beneath him after it stung. 

Wide, askew blue eyes lit up the dark of the fridge as Pennywise observed Eddie’s cracked and dry hands, and the way the boy tried to fight for something in one of his fanny packs. Eddie was holding one hand close to his chest and Pennywise smelled the blood soaking his shirt. 

It blinked rapidly, frown creasing all around it’s lily-white face. “You’re hurt.” 

Eddie shushed him automatically. He was sweating and a little more than afraid, though not of being caught (weren’t they too old for this game? Georgie wasn’t, but the rest of them… did Beverly titter about playing a baby’s game with her other friends that were girls  _“’Titter’? Eds, what’s with you and -?” “Shut. The Fuck up. Hypothetical Richie!”)_

Pennywise was already shifting, somehow changing into a pose where he and Eddie could look at each other from side-by-side, and his enormous hand curled around Eddie’s wrist as he brought the bloody hand closer. 

“What happened?” Pennywise whispered, sounding slightly afraid like he was unsure he’d made Eddie bleed or not. 

“Nothing!” Eddie yell-whispered back. “It just happens sometimes, when you wash your hands more than eight times a day.” 

He’d finally gotten a hold of the sanitizer and was trying to flip the lid up, but Pennywise had wrapped both hands around him and the stinging was gone in a millisecond. 

“What’d you do?!” Eddie asked, not knowing what he felt as he looked at the clean, soft hand returned to him. 

Pennywise smiled hopefully. “I fixed it so you can wash again. It won’t hurt now.” 

Eddie paused, looking from the clown to his hand and back. It’d been a nice gesture, but Eddie pondered why, as he slipped the bottle back inside his pack and zipped it, he felt so ridiculous for panicking over it in the first place. 


	5. Georgie Complains about Vegetables

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Georgie complains about eating vegetables, and Pennywise thinks it's a good idea to steal them from the Denbroughs' fridge.

Pennywise got down on his knees in front of the child, still a head or two or three taller than Georgie despite getting as low to the ground as he possibly could. He tapped the side of Georgie’s frowning face, and felt warmth expand in side his chest when the boy leaned away with an indulgent smile. 

“What’s wrong?” The clown asked, blinking when Georgie refused to stay smiling. 

“I’m grounded.” Georgie folded his arms across his narrow chest, pulling at the itchy sweater vest he’d been forced into. “I came to tell you that. Cos my mom grounded me starting tomorrow.” 

“Gro-ounded.” Pennywise whistled the word as it worked around in his mouth. He cocked his head to the side in question. 

“It means I have to stay inside this weekend,” Georgie began to mumble. “And maybe forever, if I don’t eat the celery sticks she makes Billy and me for lunch.” 

Georgie sway from left to right. It was still unfair to him that something so small as not eating a small portion of his packed lunchbox was going to get him into so much trouble. He’d planned to bring his LEGOS to 29 Neibolt again, intent on building a whole city if he had enough this time. 

The boy threw his hands up, bewildering Pennywise for once. “It’s just vegetables! Mom knows I don’t like them, and neither does Bill, but she still wants us to eat ‘em anyway.” 

He knew the basic concept of what a vegetable was, but Pennywise had admittedly never seen one up close and personal. Still, if it was keeping Georgie inside and bored and not with him then Pennywise knew he hated them just as much as the youngest Denbrough boy did. 

The clown folded his arms across his chest like Georgie did, having to move awkwardly over the pompoms that lined the center of them to maintain the same air of frustration. 

“Vegetables are green, aren’t they?” Pennywise asked, already concocting a plan in his bulbous head despite Georgie’s apparent confusion. 

“Well, carrots are orange and tomatoes are red.” Georgie elaborated, face screwing up at the thought of a tomato. Even the tiny ones were gross and had juice that got everywhere when you bit into it. 

He thought a little harder. “Oh! Corn is yellow, and that’s a vegetable. But the baby corns aren’t so bad, so I don’t count it.” 

Pennywise followed his explanation with a far-off look before nodding with total comprehension. “Good to know.” 

* * *

“Penny!” Georgie laughed so hard that he’d started hiccuping, and had to have Bill pat his back to stop long enough to speak coherently. “Stop raiding the fridge!” 

Both boys were trying not to bump heads as they hung over the sink. Being inside had left them with no choice but to use other means outside of traveling to the well house to contact their alien, but Bill had believed that a stern talking to via the pipes in their house would be the fastest remedy for that. 

Pennywise’s telltale rasp sounded more shrill coming up than in the open air. “ _Where have you been?_ ” 

“B-behind bars.” Bill said sarcastically. 

“ _What?_ ” 

“St-stop eating all our vegetables. You’re m-making Mom have a bitch fit.” Bill exclaimed while reaching over to pat Georgie’s back as he continued to shake with laughter. 

The sink drain was silent, but when it rattled, neither boy could control their fits of glee at the tone of pure offense in the clown’s voice. 

“ _You think I would eat those?!_ ” Pennywise retched audibly. 


	6. Pennywise and Tim

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Imagine Pennywise petsitting Bill and Georgie's hamster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This wasn't quite a prompt, but I wrote a little something for the idea anyway.

Pennywise sat crouched in front of the rectangular cage. He couldn’t, in his chosen form, get small enough to be the same size as Bill and Georgie’s hamster, but Pennywise was doing his best to sit like it did. Whenever the Losers decided to meet in his well house, Pennywise knew it was best to sit like they did so as to avoid odd looks and constant teasing from everyone in the group. 

At least the hamster’s method of balancing its limbs was a tad simpler; but Pennywise still wished his friends would return soon, especially Bill or Georgie, or better yet both. Their pet was interesting to watch for a little while, as it roamed its many tubes that Pennywise liked (because they were like his own pipes in the underground) and could roll itself into a little ball or run fast on all fours on its inside-out ferris wheel. The hamster couldn’t talk, however, and it had a habit of freezing in the middle of what it was doing to stare at Pennywise with its deep, black buttons for eyes that the clown didn’t care for. 

Pennywise could feel its curiosity and the slightest niggling of judgement from the rodent, and he didn’t care for that either. 

“Stop staring like that.” He searched for a way to break the awkward tension.

 “Please, stop staring like that.” Pennywise amended. “You’re fr-ee-eaking me out.” 


	7. Bill Teaches Pennywise about Human Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Anything with Nice!Penny and Bill, like Bill helping Pennywise understand human things.

“What’s this?” 

“Th-that’s a tape measure.” Bill murmured, eyes barely flicking over to the pasty clown taking up one full corner of his room. Although he’d said he’d behave, Bill could already tell that Pennywise was having a difficult time staying still and manageable. It was a shame that Georgie had had to crash after running himself clean out of his previous adrenaline rush, but it wasn’t unexpected. 

The kid was currently conked out on Bill’s bed, mouth agape as he drooled all over the pillow. 

“What’s it for?” But when one kid falls asleep, another had to be there to annoy the high school freshman with a barrage of questions. 

“L-lots of th-things.” Bill was bent over his desk, one hand braced on the edge of his desk as he scribbled sentences down with an above-average fury. He was in the zone to write a good three pages on the subject of possible life on Mars. The assignment that his class had been given in English class was perfect, as Bill was sure that he’d get a perfect score when going beyond expectations with the prompt. 

Bill was a Loser, and a loser, but if he’d been given any semblance of luck at all in his life it was the ability to fuse science and composition effortlessly. 

“It’s what people u-use to measure stuff.” Bill finished another statement on his paper. “If I wanna know how tall G-Georgie is, he stands against the wall and I measure him with the tape.” 

“Oh.” Pennywise blinked slowly. 

So, Bill waited. His quick and seamless transition from written word to word slowing fractionally minute by minute as Pennywise pondered the explanation. 

He didn’t have to look up to see the proverbial lightbulb go off above the clown’s ginger head. “Will you measure me?” 

Bill sighed through his nose, flipped his assignment over to the next clean page and finally turned to face the alien that didn’t have any plans as far as leaving to return to his underground hideaway. 

“I’m kinda b-busy right now.” Bill felt a lurch in his chest at the exaggerated disappointment that extinguished the visible glow of Pennywise’s eyes. “Bu-but we can, Georgie and I, before Mom and Dad come back home. Okay?” 

Easily-pleased Pennywise nodded vigorously, the life and color springing back into his form just as lickety-split fast as it had disappeared. He fell just short of clapping his hands in joy like an overgrown baby, but it didn’t stop him from drawing nearer to his friend with renewed curiosity. 

“Oh! Oh! Bill!” Pennywise’s arm shot out in front of Bill’s face as he was about to turn back to his papers. “I wanted to ask about that too! What - what is _that_?” 

Bill’s eyes followed the trail from Pennywise’s arm down to the tip of his pointer finger (and what a distance that was) to see the solar system that took up the other corner of his room. 

“The w-whole thing? That’s a model of our solar system…” Bill squinted, rearing back to look at the clown still hanging over him. “Aren’t you from outer space?” 

“Yes…” 

“Well then, shouldn’t you know what the s-solar system looks like?” The 14-year-old tapped his pencil against the desk for a moment, then gasped loudly. “Wait! You’re from outer space!” 

“What’s it like?!” 


	8. Pennywise gets a MakeOver

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Bev brings makeup to the well house and Penny lets itself be used as a prototype. It doesnt understand why the rest of the Losers..."lose it" and shout "WHAT DID YOU JUST DO THE CLOWN" since it has no concept of gender.

Beverly worked around the many agonized expressions her oversized friend was making, but she couldn’t help poking him in the eye a time or two with her eyeliner. 

“I hate this.” Pennywise whined, flinching away from the pain. 

Beverly’s brows knit together, her lips pressing together tightly as she patted a flippant hand on his ruffled shoulder… well, arm. 

“I know, it’s weird. I told you so, though, so…” Beverly pulled him down by the chin firmly. “You’ve been a really good sport so far, ya know.” 

Her compliment worked like a charm - Pennywise leaned in at a different, better angle and let her try again. The predictability of it made Bev feel like a teacher with a teacher’s pet, dangling onto her every note of praise with insatiable neediness. It was overwhelming but hard to distance oneself from, especially when the creature wrapped around her finger was Pennywise, of all… people. 

“Besides, it’s not my fault that I haven’t practiced putting makeup on anyone else.” The girl’s head tipped to the side in contemplation. She had the sudden need to see the clown with darker face paint, especially on his lips which were always ruby red and glistening due to his unfortunate habit of drooling. Heaven knew that her decision to make his eyes ‘pop’ more than they already did was excessive, but Beverly considered her options carefully. 

And Pennywise considered her, close enough to see the freckles over her rounding cheeks and the lack of circles beneath her eyes. He’d known it when he’d felt it radiating from her like heat from a sun that Beverly had been excited at getting an OK to do the whole makeup thing from him. Bevvie didn’t have (any) a lot of friends who were girls, and for some troubling reason, no one in the Losers’ Club would participate like a girl might. 

It was very unfair, and Pennywise frowned deeply over the issue. What did one do when their friend was being treated unfairly? You definitely couldn’t scare or kill them to make them like you… then they’d just be dead, or worse, afraid of you. 

 _She’s the coolest out of all of us, let’s be honest._  

“Beverly.” 

“Hm?” 

The clown’s eyes rolled up to the ceiling as he repeated something what Ben had once said verbatim. “You’re the coolest out of all of us, honest.” 

It was Beverly’s turn to flinch away like she’d been hurt, but the brilliant, flustered smile that bloomed over her freckled face said otherwise. 

“Aw, thanks buddy.” Pennywise returned the smile wholeheartedly, looking twice as ridiculous as usual with the overly abundant blush coating his pale white face and the rings of thick eyeliner and mascara around his blue eyes. 

Quite embarrassed, Beverly tucked a curl of hair behind her hair before pressing on. “I almost forgot! Look what I got for you!” 

* * *

“Are you fucking kidding me?” 

Beverly took to holding the dolled-up clown’s hand for the rest of their visit, supportive even in the face of Pennywise’s obliviousness. She’d worked damn hard on his face practically all day, and Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier wasn’t gonna bring either of them down. 

“Nope.” Beverly asserted, chin up. “I think he looks good.” 

Mike and Bill were doing a great job of stifling their laughter, and the others weren’t so vocal, not while Eddie had both hands over Georgie’s eyes and Stan was also trying not to look. 

“Yeah, **he**! And no, it doesn’t matter if you think **he**  looks good.” 

“What matters then?” 

“Guys don’t wear makeup, Beverly!” Richie gestured at some invisible thing only he could see as if it had all the answers. 

The red-head rolled her eyes. “Sure they do. David Bowie wears different kinds of makeup all the time, and no one gives him shit for it.” 

“Don’t compare our clown to a weirdo rock God! That’s not fair!” 


	9. Pennywise gets Hurt somehow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Pennywise is hurt somehow and the kids worry for him.

They hadn’t had any particular plan of action in mind for the day, but it was almost the end of summer and the Losers were supposed to be having fun. They ended up running amok at the canal, lying in wait near one of the pipes that they only had to crouch to walk through until all 9 of them were present. Even so, the sun had risen as high as it could and was starting to dip back down before they’d reached a maximum of 8. 

Bill had Georgie by the hand as they dragged their feet while tracking through the shallow water. They formed a grim disparity to the scene they arrived at where Mike had been chasing Beverly with sticks for antlers on his head and Stan and Eddie were ganging up on Richie with violent splashes of water. 

“Hey, where’s the clown?” Stan asked after a beat. 

Georgie and Bill both frowned, and the younger Denbrough boy was hesitant before he replied, head sunk down against his shoulders. “He’s in bed… sick.” 

* * *

It was distressing to see the creature lying there, no theatrics nor melodramatic whining employed. The clown leaned into Georgie’s arms, having been embraced as soon as they were all the way inside the tunnels, face partially hidden as he closed his luminescent eyes and huffed against the child’s hold. The normally chipper and inquisitive demeanor of the clown had dimmed and had left behind a reclusive, too-quiet and too-pale clown. 

Pennywise’s tufts of fiery hair were in disarray, and the red of his lips and that flowed up like flagstaffs in the middle of his eyes was almost grey. The ruffles of his outfit were even in tatters, noticeably unraveling and ripped at the seams in many places. 

“What’s wrong with you?” Ben questioned, sitting criss-crossed on one side of the grubby mattress that the group had found for him at the junkyard not long ago. 

Those odd and intense eyes traveled to Ben’s concerned guise, and Pennywise looked remorseful while hoisting one of his arms up in front of the other Losers. It dangled limply like an untouched marionette’s peg, but in no time everyone saw pieces of the clown detach from his body and begin floating away. 

Ben’s mouth opened in silent awe, but it was Bill’s voice that came, hushed, stunned. “He’s f-falling apart.” 

“I don’t know what’s wrong.” Georgie shook frantically, afraid while the fragments  continued to rise until they dissipated midway through the air. “We don’t know what to do.” 

Bill, one of the few kids still standing over the scene, sagged. Beside him, Beverly took Pennywise’s arm down and held it close as she kneeled to comfort him. She could already see tears springing up at the corners of Georgie’s eyes and it hurt to see.  

“Do you know what’s wrong?” She asked softly of the alien. 

Pennywise stared at her in silence. 

“You do.” She stated, petting his hand in her own. He couldn’t lie to Beverly, even if he refused to speak. “It’s alright, you can tell us.” 

One by one, the other Losers followed her lead, and Georgie’s, laying their hands against the clown’s hair or his shoulder, his feet or patting his back. He was still afraid to say anything, being so weak and tired. 

“I…” He started, chirring. “I’m meant to be asleep. Now.” 

“Why can’t you sleep?” Georgie asked. “It’d make you feel better. We feel better after we sleep when we’re sick, too.”  

As much as he often acted like a child, Pennywise’s sigh was bone-deep and made him seem as old as he really was. “I don’t want to go. If I sleep… then…”

“Then…” Mike had it figured out enough. “You won’t wake up.” 

Pennywise could hardly nod affirmatively, but Georgie began crying the moment he did. 

“Are you dying?!” He leaned his head against the clown’s, brushing soft brown hair over his forehead. 

“I’ll wake up.” Pennywise contended, afraid to see the little boy cry. He could feel it inside and out, and while he’d wanted to avoid it by any means possible, Pennywise couldn’t escape. 

The clown tried to pat Georgie’s arms, tried to mirror the comfort that the others had deigned _him_ with. “But you’ll all be gone. You’ll have grown and moved on as I sleep.” 


	10. Pennywise as a Giant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Good!Pennywise taking on the giant form from the projector scene, and the kids reaction.

Spring Break had come and gone, a full weeks worth of fun and better yet, no school. The Denbroughs had vacated Derry a good few days earlier than the break and had traveled to a good old-fashion theme park once Zack was given the OK on getting some time off. These were fickle occurrences, only happening by chance and never when the whole family were freed from their individual obligations. Until now, of course. 

The brothers had stuck together while saying goodbye to all their friends (Georgie had more than 3 including his brother!) and making a good, asymmetrical pattern while zigzagging around Derry. And their departure was met with good cheer and minimal griping about ‘abandoning’ the other Losers. It wasn’t until they’d found themselves at the well in 29 Neibolt House, after searching high and low for their ethereal friend, who for someone his height was very good at hiding, and finding nothing. 

Georgie and Bill both took turns calling for him, as they didn’t have time to sneak into the sewer pipes to find Pennywise’s underground hovel, but it was no use. 

“We’re sorry, Penny! Please talk to us!” Georgie repeated for what might’ve been the fourth or fifth time. The clink of water falling from where it’s collected in the cracked stone of the well was all there was to hear. 

Bill had sighed through his nose, and gently pulled his little brother away. “I-It’s not worth it, Georgie. H-h-he’s just being a baby now.” 

Georgie’s lower lip stuck out. “I told you we should’ve invited him. Then he wouldn’t be being so mean.”

There wasn’t anything left to say as Bill shook his head and led his brother out of the Always In-Progress house and back up to their home. They needed to get ready and pack, and trying to appease a man-child of an alien clown would’ve taken all day anyway 

* * *

“Why do we _need_ to see slides from your vacation, again?” Richie dragged his feet up the driveway while he was jostled forward by Beverly on one side and Ben on the other. 

“G-Georgie wanted you guys to come over.” Bill reasoned, turning from where the little boy led the way into their home garage to walk backwards and make sure Richie wasn’t keeping everyone back. “He w-wanted you to see the pictures, s-since he took them.” 

“Are Georgie and your dad the same person?” Richie looked at Stan and watched the curly-haired boy’s eyes roll a full circle in his skull. 

“You’re one to talk.” He responded stonily. “I bet your dad would gladly show the whole neighborhood a hundred slideshows about when you popped out of your mom’s -”  

“H-hey!” Bill glanced back at Georgie, whom was still safely oblivious. 

“I’d take that bet! Five bucks says your wrong, and my pops doesn’t have any pictures of me… like that!” Richie spared them all any graphic imagery, practically feeling Bill’s eyes as he glared a hole in his head. 

“Ooh! I wanna bet!” Ben raised a hand like an excited gameshow contestant. “I bet Stan and Richie’s dads have contests about whose slideshows are worse!” 

Beverly snorted loudly, while Stan and Richie both looked at the rounder boy like he was out of his mind. 

“What?!” 

“Ten bucks!” Ben responded. Mike, trailing their group, had to cover his mouth to keep from laughing at the inanity of it. 

“Shh! Guys!” Georgie bounded out of the garage door to frown at them. “You gotta be quiet when entering a movie theater! Come on!” 

 

* * *

They sat in a semi-circle, all 8 of them, after Bill had done most of the work in turning on the slideshow. The Denbrough garage was far from a movie theater, being cramped with their father’s half-finished carpentry, but the Losers Club were more than willing to play nice if it made Georgie happy. The child had stars in his eyes when you made him happy, and it didn’t take much. 

Before a slide skipped, and another, and another, and then another. 

“What’s going on?” Mike asked. He and the other kids were already getting to their feet while the images flipped faster.  

The lot of them jumped up as one when the lights flashed off and back on, with Richie being one of the loudest screamers, before Pennywise was completely visible. He was half-way in the garage and halfway in the projected image of the one of Bill’s favorite rides in the theme park, and he was at least the size of two cars stacked on top of each other. Pennywise had defied all laws of physics entirely, and came complete with a set of stalactite-sized razor teeth and burning yellow eyes. 

The room went dead, and then Georgie jumped up from where he’d stumbled, a great big smile on his face.   

“Billy! He’s like Falcor!” Georgie bounced on his toes while wrapping his arms as far as they could go around Pennywise’s forearm. It was about as easy as wrapping your arms around the base of a wind turbine, with Georgie looking even more like speck compared to the clown whose whole head was the size of the screen behind him. 

“H-how…?” Bill had no clue as to where Georgie was getting that logic from. Pennywise and Falcor were nothing alike, aside from both being enormous and impossible. Was it because both were blindingly white? “No, he is-isn’t.”

“Holy shit, no, the squirt’s right!” Richie gasped, despite Bill’s dismissal. “Don’t listen to your brother, Georgie. Pen’s definitely like Falcor - and you know what we should do?” 

“You can’t be serious.” Beverly responded flatly.  

“There’s no way we could take him out like this! We can’t even bring him out in public when he’s not a giant!” Eddie scolded him, thwacking Richie upside the head, although relatively lightly. 

An argument broke out then, as per usual when Richie and Eddie got too involved in their own insult toss. However, with the addition of Beverly, who Ben and Bill both saw the need to defend if she was in the least bit talked back to, the chorus of their voices only got louder. 

Georgie tried to climb the fabric of Pennywise’s costume, wondering how he could make his clothes so big to fit this form without ripping at all. Pennywise, for his part, retracted the tusks for teeth and his burning eyes adjusted to their safe, kind bluish hue. He laid a hand beneath the little boy still trying to shimmy up his arm to ensure Georgie’s safety as he climbed higher. 

“You weren’t scared?” Pennywise asked, brows downturned into a deep v-shape. 

“Uh-uh.” Georgie said. Pennywise was hoisting him up, then. 

“I felt something when I jumped out - jump-jumped out like a Jack-in-a-Box!” He claimed. 

“That was a jumpscare.” Georgie informed him. “Those are startling, not scary, silly.” 

“Ah, I see.” The two friends didn’t have long to play like Georgie was riding Falcor and off to save the day, as Pennywise began shrinking and climbed out of the screen projector fully. He kept his best-best friend high on his shoulders however, letting Georgie feel taller than the rest of their club as the memory of being left behind obliterated in Pennywise’s mind. He was glad that they were all together and home again. 


	11. Pennywise is Sad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Pennywise is sad for some reason and the Losers try to cheer him up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ....... So, anyway..........

“Hungry.” Pennywise whined, rasping as he sank his gloves in the water just outside the canal pipe and swirled water around in circles. The clown watched as he easily turned the tide of the water around him, creating whirlpools with his enormous hands. No one had taught him how to skip stones across water yet, but Pennywise supposed this was just as fun.

Beside him, Georgie patted his shoulder and made the bells attached to his frilly collar ting softly. It filled the cheerless silence, but the fun sounds didn’t improve Pennywise’s mood whatsoever. 

“Hungry. Hungry.” Saliva dripped from the clown’s mouth and mixed with the water, as Pennywise imagined snapping his jaws around a fearful human’s throat. How sweet it would be, to have the copper taste of blood on his tongue after going so long without it. 

Stan bringing his piggybank of pennies to 29 Neibolt for the clown to suck on had been a kind gesture, but they weren’t doing it for Pennywise anymore. 

“Billy?” Georgie turned to his brother, still kneeling beside their starved friend and pouting all the while. “Can’t we let him eat something? He’s so hungry!” 

“W-we _can’t_ , Georgie.” Bill’s ton was unusually soft as he gaped at the spectacle before him. 

Pennywise had kept them all safe on multiple occasions, and despite how wrong it was, Bill was having a hard time turning on the fact that this demonic beast that had turned out to be a pretty good friend also needed food. A pretty good friend who’d tried his best to not give into his true nature, so as not to frighten them away. 

The other children, older and far less blind to just how fucked up the situation was, continued to stare in silence. Individually, the rest of the Losers were just as challenged by the cycle of feeling sorry for their alien friend, to not wanting to be complicit in Pennywise’s unorthodox way of obtaining sustenance, and then feeling guilty for even considering it. If you were a good human being, you didn’t murder other people, or turn a blind eye on other people being murdered just so your local clown could snack. 

Richie was the first teenager of the bunch to consider it aloud, though he raised cautious hands just as the majority of his friends turned on him with scowling faces. 

“So, I’m not saying we should, but if we were to lure Belch into the well house, we might be able to keep Pen from going hungry for the rest of the year.”

“God damn it, Richie.” Beverly hid her face in her hands. She felt a prickle of discomfort over the fact that she’d just imagined setting Pennywise loose on her father. 

 “That’s not funny.” Mike mumbled. He imagined the clown dragging Henry Bowers and his father down the well and living in a town without them. It sounded pretty fantastic, to be brutally honest. 

Eddie was uncharacteristically silent, as silent as Stan while he saw his own father’s face come to mind. Ben twiddle his fingers, feeling frightened enough that he was warming up to the idea of Greta never being able to taunt Beverly 

Georgie gripped the clown’s arm, hugging him close and looked at Bill as imploringly as he could. “Please, Billy?” 

For better or for worse, all eyes were on Bill, who held his breath. At least… well, at least Pennywise had tried. And at least Pennywise looked ashamed.

And, at least…


	12. A Turtle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The Losers take Pennywise out for a swim and he's chased by a turtle.

Ben was one of the only kids to put sunscreen on aside from Eddie, despite the fact that over half of their club were as white as snow and he was sure that Richie had as much a chance of burning in the summer sun as he himself did. 

Nonetheless, Ben was afraid to nag his friends since a.) Eddie was already doing a bang-up job on that and b.) Ben wasn’t sure why he was so worried in the first place. Perhaps it was because, after visiting places like Florida and California at different points of his young life, Ben was more than a little uneasy about being sunburned. It could get real bad, so bad in fact that your skin could develop boils that were sensitive to the touch and painful to carry on with. 

The thought of his worst sunburn ever caused Ben to shudder where he shifted from rock to rock, and instead of dwelling on those unfortunate memories any longer, he turned to the most audaciously bizarre member of the club with a curious eye. 

“Hey, Pennywise… where’d you learn how to swim anyway?” Ben asked. He, like the other Losers, had gotten much better at making pleasant conversation with the almost 7ft. tall clown. And yet, Ben was rather soft-spoken and polite, so one could arguably never tell if he’d gotten used to having an alien for a a friend or not. 

An alien who was dazzled by the concept of arm floaties apparently, as once Pennywise caught wind of Georgie’s, the clown had been hypnotized. At that moment, Pennywise had managed to get a hold of one and was trying hard not to pop it with his curious claws. Georgie had had to keep the other one on at the very least, despite sulking over how floaties made him look like a baby. 

Pennywise looked up, still distracted so much that one of his eyes was still purposefully staring at the swimming aid that would just not fit over his forearm, let alone over his upper arm. 

“Don’t swim.” The clown replied off-handedly. “I can float.” 

Pennywise’s lower lip protruded in an over-exaggerated pout. He shook a massive arm out with helpless abandon. “Georgie. Billy. Help.” 

Georgie’s high-pitched giggles (which were beginning to turn into scream laughter the longer they stayed friends with this ridiculous creature) and Bill’s exasperated sighs dulled the mile-a-minute conversations occurring between the rest of the Losers (Richie and Stan were curiously absent) and Ben’s one-sided attempt at distracting himself. 

“You d-don’t need these.” Bill groaned, all while trying to pry the floatie off of the clown. “Georgie needs them for safety.”

“Nuh-uh!” Georgie retorted, offended. It didn’t mean much when he couldn’t escape the torrent of giggles bursting forth from his mouth. “I can swim! I can swim better than Penny, even!” 

Somehow, someway, despite both their whining and pleading, Bill managed to retrieve the aid and give it back to Georgie. He stomped his foot and held it out at arms length, but Bill was insistent, feeling too old for this shit. 

“I’ll just have Penny save me if I start drowning, which I won’t!” Georgie figured, already standing dragging Pennywise over to the shallow end of the water. Pennywise let himself be led, sniffing as he stared at his reflection in the surface and breathing in the cool, clean scent of freshwater. It was… pleasant, not better or worse than Pennywise’s abode in the tunnels of the Derry sewer system, but nice. He could tell why the kids enjoyed it at least. Kids had more fun when the environment was clean, not dirty. 

Unlike Georgie, Bill, Beverly, Mike, Eddie or Ben, Pennywise in no way opted to change his clothes and simply dove into the water in full costume. He’d done this before, the whole ‘swimming’ thing, with Georgie on his back. It was always nice when, although the boy knew that Pennywise could conjure up a boat for the Denbrough brothers to sail in, Pennywise was reminded of his personal importance by Georgie never asking for such a thing. He’d asked once, entranced by the magic and illusion that Pennywise was capable of, but that had been the first and last time. 

The clown rested in the water like a crocodile while Georgie gloated on his shoulders, until the smell of other living creatures prompted Penny to submerge himself. Without needing to breathe above or below land, Pennywise was able to stay under and let the waterlogged voice of his little friend pass over him. Something like ‘I told you so!’ filtered from above, and Pennywise felt a beam of pride over the fact that he’d delivered on something… though he’d forgotten what that was exactly. 

Blurs of dark and indistinguishable color grabbed Pennywise’s attention instead, and as best he could, the alien tried to follow the movement of each thing close to him. Tiny, pinkie-sized fish skittered by, pebbles and stones rose and fell with the water, and hurrying animals without name either paused or froze after catching a glimpse of his incredibly pale and fiery profile absentmindedly floating in the water. 

But of course, the most curious animal of all, that felt confident and at peace enough to bump into Pennywise was none other than a turtle. A turtle, which prodded Pennywise’s temple with its snapping mouth, and which forced the clown to spend a few seconds looking for it, and another just staring dumbfounded as it stared back like the jaws of hell. 

* * *

 

The scream was inhuman - more of a screech that pulsated beneath the placid lake water and made every one jump back in surprise. Georgie echoed that scream, lurching forward to wrap his arms around Pennywise before the clown sprung up from the water and backpedaled. 

“What?! What is it? Holy shit, is it a shark???” Eddie panicked, mouth flooding with water the moment he spoke. 

“Sharks don’t live in lakes.” Beverly’s mouth hung open, her reply a mere thought spoken out loud. 

“W-what? Hey! W-w-w-” Bill couldn’t get in another word while watching Pennywise and Georgie floundered above the water, Pennywise swerving and seizing clumsily yet not purposefully as he fought to escape whatever it was beneath the water. 

“Bill!” Georgie kept holding on for dear life even when Pennywise had made it back to speckled earth and out of the lake, flopping down onto the ground as he shivered and convulsed. 

 

* * *

“I can’t believe _this_ is what scares _you_. Out of everything else in the whole world, _this_ is it.” Mike deadpanned. The turtle from earlier, which had let the abused waters push it up onto the shore, had let itself be picked up and held above the cowering mess of a clown, eyes as intelligent and unfettered as ever. 

“ _Not scared._ ” Pennywise’s voice was half a growl, but he jolted away as soon as Mike brought the creature closer, teasingly. “Get it away! Get it away!” 

“Aw, don’t be afraid.” Georgie stroked the turtle’s shell, having immediately taken a shine to it despite it being the cause of his near-death. “He’s so cute!” 

“Noooo.” The clown was hurt. “I am cute. That is a-a-a beast! Don’t touch! Kill!” 

Beverly snorted from where she kneeled, sweeping Pennywise’s dampened hair out of his eyes, which glowed like yellow owl eyes. “What? Did a turtle murder your family?” 

Pennywise just mumbled and moaned some more. 


	13. Richie's Laser Pointer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: You know some people pointing lasers and the cat ends behind the wall? I can see Richie doing that with Penny and make him chase the dot.

“This is incredibly degrading.” Stan spoke flatly. 

“For who?” Richie clutched the keychain-sized laser pointer and let it shuffle between his knuckles while the speck of a red light it emitted dragged along the ground. “For us, or for the clown? If it’s us, then I’m cool with it. I didn’t think we could sink any lower, honestly.” 

“Point it over there!” Eddie squealed, excitement written all over his face in place of his usual nervousness. Richie did as he was told (for once) and pointed the laser pointer against the far wall opposite the Losers. They watch, still scarcely able to believe that such a massive creature like Pennywise could be as nimble and stealthy while running on all fours. It was only slightly more impressive than that, when you looked at the clown’s eyes, his pupils were twenty times larger than what they should be. 

Richie waited for Pennywise to lift a paw of a hand up and slam it down on the ground where the red dot hovered, then clicked it off with expert timing. 

“Oh! So close! Sorry buddy!” Richie’s faux sincerity was lost on the clown, whom looked stricken by the sudden disappearance. 

“Where is it?” He turned in circles like a dog. 

“R-Richie…” Bill said, sternly. He side-eyed their bespectacled friend with a small frown on his face, but it didn’t last long. “M-make him climb up the tower of toys t-this time.” 


	14. Bill's Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Imagine what would happen if pennywise woke up from his slumber to find out one of his kids (bill) was killed and spent his time hunting down their murderer.

His whole body was burning - it was much too unsettling and difficult to handle, compared to the usual cool internal temperature that this form of his operated on. When he turned his gaze upon anything in motion, Pennywise found it made him ache as well, and in certain moments he was nearly blinded, especially in the light. 

It was the hunger. Hunger made him burn and slump and fragile enough to split at the seams, but Pennywise wouldn’t give up until his year was over, and maybe not even after that. He wouldn’t stop until the memory of Bill was at peace, and whomever had cut his life short was dragged into a hell of Pennywise’s own making. 

He slunk around, not quite so afraid while contorting through pipelines beneath the country - which was so big and expansive that just the thought sometimes left the clown out of breath. It was hard to get a decent meal when you were always moving, but California was a long way from Derry, Maine and one had to be quick and go unseen as much as possible. 

The monster could no longer retain his human-like hands, and so beheld stale planets from Bill’s old planetarium. The Earth and Saturn and Mars (Billy had been fascinated by Mars) and the Moon were held in dark-skinned talons like they were Pennywise’s own eggs. They smelled like Bill, like the Denbrough home, despite years of wear and neglect, and though it pained the clown to realize that he’d lost the scent of the children that he’d protected 27 years ago, these would lead Pennywise to Bill’s home now. 

He’d find a woman named Audra, just like Georgie had said through tears, and there Pennywise would find Bill’s home and his heart. 


	15. Mama Bear/Papa Wolf in One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt(s): Penn having to get up close and personal (as opposed to using illusion to freak the offender out) and scary to protect its gang of kiddos.
> 
> What about Pennywise losing control while protecting the losers? Maybe he’s gone too long with out feeding or something?
> 
> What if someone was trying to hurt the losers club and georgie and Pennywise got all protective mama bear on them. Pennywise: See these kids theyre my babies dont f@#*kin touch my babies!

This was just getting ridiculous. Leave it to the neglectful parents of Derry to finally get their act together just when it was completely unnecessary, and in the most extravagant way possible.

Their worry over where the Losers had been for several nights now, not even thinking about the possibility that every child had very good reason to leave home, was their own undoing as well as the kids’. But Pennywise didn’t care about those _people_. He only had eyes for his own. 

It was Eddie’s mom that had been the straw to break the camel’s back, in the end. If everything wasn’t so dire, and he hadn’t been simmering over the loss of 8 children from 29 Neibolt House, the clown might’ve gotten a kick out of Sonia Kaspbrak’s realization at what she’d done. 

* * *

“It’s such a shame, when children as young as you and your brother are put into this kind of situation. Your friends as well, but I feel bad for you two boys.” Mr. Brigs tsk’d.  

“What do you mean?” Bill asked, instantly so afraid that he didn’t register the fact that he hadn’t stuttered once. He’d been taken into a room that looked less child-friendly and more like a cold, adult interrogation room. Bill wasn’t a prisoner, technically, but he felt like one - caught between helplessness over his parents’ neglect and between the possibility of being removed from his home and his friends entirely. 

And he was alone. The other Losers, all of them excluding Georgie, whom had been kept at home until the police and this social worker, were satisfied enough to make a judgement call - they were probably being held in a waiting cell, in all but name. 

“Well, adoption agencies can’t make exceptions for all the children that walk through their doors.” The austere man said, hands folding behind his back and tearing Bill’s attention away from his fears. “Not even for siblings, let alone children from the same town, even if they are friends…” 

Bill’s chest constricted, his throat closed, and his thoughts turned to Georgie. His baby brother was only 7 years old, and had gone weepy from being separated from Bill during this one instance. Their mother and father weren’t making it any easier on Georgie, or Bill for that matter, not while they argued and protested it when their sons said a word before any law official that came a-calling. Bill had also been smacked behind closed doors, repeatedly. 

“Y-y-you can’t separate us.” His voice was weak, and his conviction just the same. Bill wanted to believe that, desperately, but the law was final and supernatural rituals concerning imagination were barely to be believed, let alone implemented. 

Fear was sapping the energy and the life from within the room, making it cold and making Bill sweat where he was seated. Mr. Brigs seemed kind one minute, then stern as a ruler the next. Why did adults do that? Why were they all two-faced? 

“Well, if it were up to me, I certainly wouldn’t want you two to go through that.” The man said, edging between soft and steely. “But the court may decide otherwise, son. But, if it makes you feel any better, I’m sure George would go to a good home. He’s young and well-behaved, there are parents dying for the chance to have a child just like him. And you too, I’m sure.” 

 _Think it and it’ll be real._ Bill felt like breaking down, but the fear was making him stronger, braver - irrational. 

 _They can’t separate us._  He thought, silent and shaking. 

Bill closed his eyes in preparation for the sound that was sure to come. He could feel it beneath his skin, the anticipation for something truly awful to happen to this man who’d threatened to split them all apart. Bill didn’t know what to think, if such an idea was even possible to carry out, but neither did Pennywise. 

The clown, unbeknownst to a shivering Bill, grinned savagely when the social worker turned and gasped at the sight of the monstrously tall figure. Pennywise had come from nowhere at all, as far as this man was concerned, but tricks aside from appearing in one place with the snap of one’s fingers, were cheap. Illusion wasn’t enough, magic and cunning were no match for the blood lust in Pennywise’s haunting yellow eyes. 

The social worker’s neck **snapped** audibly. It was a treat to watch the light leave _this_ human’s eyes, and to feel his bones crunch sweetly as Pennywise ground them together in one tense fist. The aged flesh in his claws was tender, so tender that Pennywise’s ministrations worked like a saw, cutting through the skin until the man’s whole head was hanging on to the rest of his body by a proverbial thread. 

Blood and tissue so visible and tantalizing - Pennywise felt his mouth fill with saliva. Completely spellbound, he dug handfuls of muscle and meat from the deceased’s back, straight through his dowdy suit, and shoved it inside his growing maw. The taste was better than anything he’d had in more than 27 years now, so delicious that Pennywise’s teeth could not be contained. Fear still lay in the creases of the man’s skin, in the dwindling currents of his puny brain, and upon he sweat clinging in his hair. With a mouth wide enough, Pennywise gorged himself, swallowing up the carcass messily. Blood, veins, shreds of muscle, all splattered on the ground. Droplets of carnage fell across Bill’s close and flecked upon his face, but he squinted his eyes shut harder. The noises behind Pennywise feasting, something that had only been spoken of and never seemed like a reality until _then_ , were enough to frighten him from his head down to his toes. 

There wasn’t time to discuss it now, but maybe later, when Pennywise regained his senses and guided Bill and the other Losers back to 29 Neibolt House. Back to safety, all while shrouded in Mr. Brigs’s blood. 

If anyone deserved a fate like this, it was this foul creature seeking to tear Pennywise and his family apart. 


	16. Pennywise's Origins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: I was inspired by a comic Penny Turns Good (saw it on this page and got me thinking) Prompt: Pennywise has lived for a long time, has been present before Derry was even founded, alone and in the dark. How he would end would be decided in a moment of a child's life. The child's death that would later bring his own, or the child's life that would remove the loneliness. The choice was Pennywise and path started with the life of a child.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, to be completely honest I was a bit confused by this prompt but I tried my best. No Losers are involved, so if that doesn't float your boat, don't worry, the next prompt will have our fav Derry children.

Winter was coming. 

The formerly-named Popham Colony were already faring poorly when they arrived in the New World, but even while some had had the foresight to form a pinprick of a colony farther north, the bitter cold approaching would surely ruin everyone in its path. 

Abigail had argued with her husband over traveling somewhere south, when they had received word of Jamestown ample provisions. It was an unwise decision, sure to fail, though she had fought his resolve to stay there in… well, what would they call this strange hollow of a place? She had lost, been scolded, and ignored by their surviving sons, all of whom followed by their father’s example and claimed not to care for their mother or only sister. Abigail was driven out of their home and near the deadening crops for her troubles. The wind outside was so chilling that she instantly regretted the decision, but it was too late as she beheld her youngest child 

She was headed downhill, a shallow reminder that she and her family had had a chance to escape this landscape and find warmer pastures, when a stranger caught her eye and made her heart plummet. From this distance, it looked like a man barely ruffled by the wind, unnaturally still as a scarecrow, standing in Abigail’s path. Just down the slope and unfathomably tall, till he might as well have touched the waning sky with his brilliant hair like flames. 

She’d heard tales of lurking stranger like this one, and those men and women that had first disappeared when Popham had separated into two conflicting colonies, but had considered it undue superstition. There were enough demons scoring their settlement and beyond, into the wilderness and unexplored land beyond that. Women were already afraid, Abigail was already afraid every day and every night for the sake of her children and her family’s survival - beastly creatures could not be her priority. 

“Please, let me and my babe pass. We are weak, the child and I, and may not make it another two monethes.” The woman whispered, clutching her baby girl tighter. The child squirmed, uncomfortable in the face of its mother’s growing fear that they were about to meet God soon enough. Abigail could not will the tiny girl to stop her powerful screams, however. “Have mercy.” 

“Thyneself will not live another night unless thine child is gifted to me.” The man said, blue seeping from his eyes the longer they stood. If Abigail had been unsure of this man being a devil of some kind before, she was resolutely certain then. The human blue of his irises had morphed into a burning, unholy yellow-orange, glowing light like full moons in the night sky. 

And he wanted her child? 

“And I will spare thyself, and thine husband, and all thine children heretofore.” The demon’s voice was a whisper in her ear, all around her through sorcery she couldn’t hope to understand. The realization made her feel heavy all over, as though she were overpowered and drowning from the sheer presence of this fiend. 

Abigail was certain she was being accosted by the devil himself. They stared at one another in silence for so long, the sun and the moon and all the universe might’ve rotated around them and neither would’ve known it. 

“No.” She whispered hoarsely, walking forward in spite of herself. 

“Yes. Yes.” His arms were impossibly long and cloaked in darkness as they stabbed through the air, stark against the greenery . “ _Yes._ ” 

* * *

“I could ju-usst eat you up, little one.” It bounced the child as the mother had done, swiping a gaunt finger over the baby’s sparse hairline. The girl, barely alive for more than four seasons in this small, strange universe, whimpered and shifted in its thick, wooly wraps. 

He shouldn’t of, but It let that finger slide down and trace over the rosy cheeks of the baby, and had that same finger stolen away by the searching girl’s grasp. The discomfort, the helplessness ( _the fear_ ) faded away gradually, until the sensation of content, as foreign to the always frightened baby as it was to her counterpart, was the only aroma in the dark well where It hid. 

In It’s lonely existence, filled with burning and dying, It had never felt the pang of warmth spread through its chest. Everything was aflame beneath the skin that It had created for itself, scarred here and there after being put together hap-hazardously.  

The creatures that dwelled in his brother’s universe were primitive and narrow-minded yet. 

It sighed, air dragging in and out of unused lungs. “Don’t worry, I won’t. You’ll be much safer with me than up there, little thing.” 

The Popham Well, pathetic as it was, had dried up but for small puddles in the hidden crevices of its stones, and coddling the baby as she fell into a peaceful sleep, It knew that - that _he_ had warmth to spare. 


	17. Georgie gets Sick

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Imagine if while Georgie was playing with Pennywise he got sick (threwup or somthing) and Pennywise got into his overprotective mode and wouldnt let anyone else near Georgie and would just hold him and try to make him feel better

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I've been dealing with a lot of mental health issues as of late, which I've gone on and on about but, I sort of used this prompt for wish-fulfillment purposes and I feel a tad ashamed but... yeah. 
> 
> Oh, and I forgot to mention this but I've been lax on responding to comments and I deeply apologize. Sometimes I don't have enough energy to do even that.

 

* * *

Georgie had come back into his room, wielding both paper and colored pencils, and had been complaining off-and-on about how Bill wouldn’t let him have the (much, much more) fun markers that bled through the pages. He’d seemed perfectly content to ignore the clown’s less friendly habits; including his steady deviation from neutral blue eyes to sour, melting orange glares and the way he salivated constantly whenever Georgie felt an ounce of contentment or anger. 

Bill and his friends had always told Georgie to be wary around the creature that had ‘befriended’ them after driving away Bowers Gang. The Losers were old enough to be entirely unsure over this ostensibly calm yet otherworldly beast, especially whenever Pennywise was close to Georgie. As a matter of fact, Bill didn’t think it safe at all for Georgie to be alone near the clown at all, and Georgie was technically breaking the rules. 

Not that he cared - whether or not Pennywise the (probably) child-eating clown liked Georgie better as a meal than as a person didn’t change the fact that Georgie liked Pennywise just as he was. 

Or liked him as much as Georgie could like anybody, lately. As he jabbered on, instructing his unwitting monster for a friend that red and black weren’t going to mix well together, the youngest Denbrough child started to run out of steam. 

Unbidden, though not entirely surprising, Georgie’s mind instantly went to a memory from four days ago when Bill had yelled at him about the markers. Georgie had wanted to use them for school when Bill had brought up how angry it made Mom whenever either of her sons weren’t careful and got marker all over their hands. Georgie had been banned for some indeterminable amount of time from using them, but no one had ever told him when that ban was up. 

The kid didn’t like to be yelled at, especially not by Bill. Bill hardly ever yelled, and when he did it was even harder for him to get his words out, which caused ample frustration. To Georgie, it was worse than being cuffed around the ear by dad, or being pulled too hard in one direction by Mom. 

With those thoughts swirling inside, it wasn’t long before the child was scribbling at his drawing mechanically, no longer enjoying himself in the slightest. The green marker in Georgie’s hand scraped against his drawing slowly. Slower, slower, until he’d stopped and was staring at the page blankly.   

“W _ha_ t is _ss_ _it?_ ” Although he was sorely in need of practice when it came to noticing the discomfort of others, Pennywise stared at the little boy, whom looked quite small with all his limbs tucked into himself.

In answer, Georgie just shook his head from side to side vigorously.  

Pennywise didn’t need an invitation or an answer in order to dive down into an unsettling crawl just to prod at Georgie with curious hands. He swept the boy’s soft hair from his forehead and felt the warm flush of Georgie’s cheeks, and inhaled - but there was nothing to indicate why this was happening. The clown considered scaring some emotion into the despondent boy, feeling an increasingly level of discomfort over the lack of response. Usually, children were creeped out by Pennywise by the end (of their lives), but Georgie was just… not like that. 

The entity thought it confounding how Georgie could easily feel llittle to nothing at all in any perceptible manner. It was intriguing, frustrating, and discomforting for Pennywise despite it being a constant in his loner’s existence. 

The clown eventually took his oversized hands back, twisting and wringing them as Georgie’s face went red, and before he knew it, Georgie was in tears. The worst kind of tears - the boy wasn’t loud and sniveling or reaching out for instant comfort, but was instead keeping it to himself as much as he could. Georgie sat, shivering while he hugged himself, only occasionally lifting a hand to aggressively wipe his face. 

Weirdly, Pennywise found it difficult to mock the little boy’s suffering when he was like this. 

But he tried anyway. 

“ _Ssstop_ it, you _w-wuss_.” Pennywise lifted Georgie up by his underarms without warning, repeating the complaint that Bill would often make whenever his little brother whined about anything. 

The clown lifted Georgie, still unresponsive, high in the air and shook him from side to side. He wasn’t forceful, but Pennywise didn’t know what else he was supposed to do with this maddening child. 

“I’ll **eat** you, if you don’t stop.” He threatened, bringing the child up closer so that they could be face to face. His eyes were ugly orange rinds in their sockets, saturating all else like the very markers that Georgie wasn’t allowed to use. 

Georgie could barely see them through his tears despite that, though it didn’t matter after the 6-year-old decided in one moment that all he wanted then was to be held. The threat didn’t register, but being held remained on Georgie’s radar as he reached forward and looped his thin arms around Pennywise’s neck and propelled himself forward. 

Georgie squeezed, nestling into the crook of his friend’s neck and snuffling into what should’ve been comforting warmth but was a void vessel instead. He didn’t care. Georgie didn’t care one bit, because this was better than the bare minimum - Billy was probably still mad at Georgie, and Mom’s hugs were hurried too many times. And Dad didn’t really hug either Bill or Georgie at all. 

He could’ve been eaten alive, and Georgie wouldn’t have cared one bit. Pennywise could’ve dropped him too, or slunk away back to the sewer pipes where he belonged, having had so little experience with affection and an almost sharp distaste for it. Georgie could’ve dealt with any of those. 

* * *

Bill took one look at his brother’s red, tear-stained face and the looming shape sitting on the edge of Georgie’s bed, with said little boy tucked up in his arms, and felt equal parts alarmed and frustrated. 

He opened his mouth, about to condemn the unearthly clown but felt exhaustion keep him from putting up any sort of fight. The clown looked dazed anyway, hesitant to full grasp how he’d kept perfectly complacent as Georgie cried himself to sleep. For no reason. 

“It w-was one of those days, wasn’t it?” Bill asked, dropping his backpack to the ground. Pennywise looked up, unconsciously pulling Georgie closer. 

 

 


	18. Scares, scares, scares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: I was wondering, would you consider maybe writing a drabble where Penny goes super-protective in front of Georgie, and ends up scaring the poor boy? And its so upset it made Georgie sad and scared, and tries desperately to fix it?

“Hiya kid.” Belch smiled, almost kindly as he stalked his way across the shallow water and sediment stone toward Georgie. 

The much smaller boy was frozen stiff, terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. He’d been riding his bike alone when he’d seen a familiar but trashed bike nestled between uprooted grass and the trees that grew close together in the Barrens. Georgie wasn’t supposed to be that far from home when he was by himself, but then again no one - including Bill - knew that Pennywise the Dancing Clown was real and not an imaginary friend. 

The younger Denbrough had taken a chance, following the trail that signified a struggle all the way down to the bank of the Kenduskeag, just to see the homeschooled boy, Michael Hanlon, being shoved into the waters. The boy was about Billy’s age, Georgie knew, but he looked younger and smaller as he was forcibly dragged through the muck, all bloody and disheveled. 

“Hey!” The elementary-schooler shouted, before his brain could catch up with his mouth. Georgie had never believed himself to be as brave as his older brother, but looking at Mike while he was struggling in that instant was enough to spur the child into some kind of action. 

Henry, Belch, and Vic had turned on Georgie so quickly that it’d rendered him mute in the span of a second afterward. He was barely 7-years old and no match for three aggressive, adrenaline-shot teenagers by himself. It didn’t make a difference that beating up a a boy half their age was an entirely new level to sink as Henry nodded at a huffing, puffing Belch to go after him, however. 

Georgie had tightened his hands around his bike handles until his knuckles had turned white, but he wasn’t thinking of fight or flight. He was just frozen. On the other side of the embankment, Mike appeared to be just as immobile and unable to keep himself above the rolling water that Henry had pushed him into.

But Georgie heard him trying. “Run away! Run! Go! Get out of here, kid!” 

Everything was headed toward slow motion as Belch came up to the boy and made to grab him. He was so close that Georgie could tell by the shin guards snug against his thick tibia that Belch had gotten to play as the Catcher that day. Denbrough stared, unable to process what was about to happen when he truly didn’t know if his brother’s rivals would actually hurt him or not, until Belch was upon him. Until the teen stopped moving entirely. 

Belch shouted unintelligibly, legs jerking up at the knees as he continued forward. In return, the ground and the water surrounding his legs formed a concave sphere. Georgie looked down to see that in lieu of Belch’s feet, there were twin holes in the ground where the teenager’s legs popped out like stalks in a garden. When Belch tried to move again, forward and back like a panicked animal, he was sucked up by the damp sand to the midpoint of his calves. 

“Henry!” Belch’s tone was one of instant alarm, but instead of freezing like he should’ve, the teen panicked furiously and began to rock back and forth with the means to get out. He sank lower and lower. “What’s happening?!” 

“Help me! Help! Henry!” He was sinking so fast now - feet, ankles, lower legs, the end of where his hip bone met his femur. Georgie might’ve blinked and seen Belch go from being three times his size to being far shorter. The water rushed on by, helping the ground beneath it slurp up the heavy-set boy like quicksand. 

Vic was already trying to get to Belch, eyes as wide as saucers, while Henry let go of the back of Mike’s shirt, gazing in disbelief. “ _What the fuck?_ ”

Henry was being swallowed up to his chest right in front of Georgie, and before Vic could even manage to pull him back up (or at least _try_ ) he too was stuck. He screamed a high-pitched scream, wriggling just like Belch had done, and he too started sinking. 

“What the fuck?” Henry shouted, kicking up water and leaving Mike behind. “What the fuck?!” 

Belch tried to shout, to turn and look back, but all Georgie heard was a gurgle from beneath the water. He saw Belch’s horrified eyes staring at him from the bleak canal before they disappeared entirely. And only a little farther away, caught between both sides of solid ground, Victor shrieked as he was dragged under by a very visible, very white hand wrapped around his knee. 

Mike gasped, flinching though untouched, but it was Georgie who burst into shocked tears and fled from the water’s edge. 

* * *

The little boy hyperventilated in his bed, all while curled into a ball beneath the covers. He sniffled, trying to muffle his sobs in his pillow, but it was borderline painful to be brave now. 

Georgie couldn’t help how his mind floundered to when Pennywise had been nice - a little odd, but nice, and when he’d been willing to try jumprope with Georgie at the start of the day. It was so unlike what had happened afterward, when Georgie had been at the mercy of his friend literally drowning two other children. The sight flashed before the child’s eyes, and made him hunker down into the fetal position for hours, even as the air beneath the sheets grew stale and too hot to handle. 

When the sound of the closet door squeaking to life intruded upon Georgie’s fearful panic attack, he only grew smaller, bracing himself as if waiting to be hurt by Belch again. 

“Go away!” He whined pitifully, kicking his feet around as he felt the distinct presence of Pennywise hanging above him like an unavoidable sun. The creature parading around as a clown was just that powerful, able to make himself known whether you saw him or didn’t… able to kill kids through sheer trickery. 

“Georgie?” The clown’s voice was soft and humble. Afraid. 

“Leave me alone!” Georgie felt a fresh wave of tears coming on. Georgie hated how the monster (for what else could the clown be now?) was able to make him feel guilty. 

“What did I do?” The human boy could just imagine Pennywise, tall and imposing but standing bereft while twiddling his fingers together and staring at the lump of blankets with frightened blue eyes. 

He hated that he instinctively wanted to comfort the upset clown just from that image alone. 

“You… You’re afraid…” It was more of a question than a statement. “Of me…? You’re afraid of me?” 

Pennywise became more gravelly, confusion turning his manner of speech into a rocky, distorted mess “They were gonna hurt you, Georgie! He was gonna hurt you!” 

“I couldn’t let ‘em, Georgie.” The bells on his frilly collar tinged gently as he lowered himself to the floor to appeal to the still-hidden child. “I wouldn’t. Don’t be afraid. Pl-pl-please don’t be…” 

Georgie backed away when he felt slight pressure on his covered head, when Pennywise started to reach out to him. A whine split the air between them, pitched like a wounded animal’s cry, but Georgie clapped his hands over his ears and tried to ignore it. 


	19. Winter Has Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A prompt idea: Penny in the snow and Georgie hiding him under his bed cause the sewers are too cold in the winter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I'm steadily getting back into the groove of writing and answering comments. I'm extremely sorry to those who left me notes and reviews and whom I haven't responded to. Unfortunately, I may not always be able to respond to each and every one of you from now on, but I will try my best. I love hearing everyone's thoughts and you all definitely help me get back on the horse, so to speak, with your kindness!

“I’m glad you weren’t frozen to death!” Georgie exclaimed, pulling Pennywise down to his knees so that he could wrap the only other coat he’d brought to rescue the clown with - his yellow rain slicker. 

It fell around Pennywise’s damp uniform like a tiny cape, and didn’t provide much warmth. Still, the clown smiled in appreciation while tightening his grip over the garment like it was the coziest shawl. Before Georgie had come, trampling around snow and sleet and slipping and sliding over icy patches of land in equal measure, Pennywise had been hiding in the corner of his underground cistern. While pain from many things such as being stabbed or shot or shoved into a bed of nails didn’t hurt Pennywise for the most part, the change in season still affected him. 

The barren cold that hit Maine like a storm was almost too much to take, especially when one lived so very close to a large body of water. When Georgie had skated toward him, safeguarded by the pile of jackets and scarves that Bill had forced him to wear, and fallen into Pennywise’s arms, the clown had made icicles hang down from his hair and replace on the bells on his collar to make the child laugh. But that was the most enjoyment that Penny was able to achieve in the long-run in the cutting chill. 

“Th-Thank you-u.” The clown chattered, buck-teeth clamping down with every word. Moving was painful, and yet he found it impossible to speak without violently shaking. “Y-y-you didn’t have to come here, you kn-n-ow. I-I won’t f-r-reeze, but you might if you s-stay down here. B-best go home now, G-Georgie.” 

Georgie’s brow furrowed. His little body shivered as he only now realized that it was indeed so very cold that he could feel it through his layers of warm clothes. 

“But you shouldn’t alone like this!” The little boy countered. He shrank down further into his puffy jacket before mumbling. “You don’t even know how to keep from shivering. See, you’re supposed to wrap your arms around yourself.” 

The child demonstrated, though it was difficult with his giant jacket sleeves. Pennywise’s lower lip trembled as a low but perceptible wind whistled through his cavernous home, but when he followed Georgie’s instructions, the trembling didn’t stop.  

Georgie eyed him, frown hollowing out ever more. Usually his advice worked for Pennywise, enough to make the oversized clown happy. 

So, he shook his head after a time. “Should’a asked you to sleep over in the first place.”

* * *

Georgie ran around his room, with Pennywise following him closely and no longer shaking like a leaf. It was a good thing that Georgie’s room had ceilings that were high enough to accommodate his friend’s absurd height, and that the wallpaper had Pennywise enraptured the moment he laid eyes on it. 

“Oh!” His eyes lit up at the softly-painted elephants and green stripes surrounding them, until Georgie ran back with one of his two blankets bundled up in his arms. 

“This is a quilt. My grandma made it for me.” The boy said, shoving the fabric into the clown’s outstretched hands. Pennywise was charmed by the soft patches of all different patterns that made up the blanket. 

“Pretty.”

Georgie ran to a different corner of the room and back again. “And this is Toothbrush! I got him after I had to go to the dentist and I had two cavities. It hurt so bad, but then Dad let me pick out a toy for being good. He’ll keep you warm too.” 

Georgie handed the clown a stuffed dog with black and white spots all over it - a funny creature that Pennywise immediately held to his tattered chest. He did the same with the puffy pillow and the purple seal with whiskers that Georgie had him as well, arms full and face nearly covered completely by the time Georgie was breathless and beaming. 

“Than-” Pennywise was interrupted when Georgie held his hands up in dismay. 

“Wait! I forgot where you’re gonna sleep…” Georgie swiveled around where he stood, having remembered in the din and fray of finding his friend as many comforting stuffed animals and bed stuffs to partially take off his jacket. It hung from one of his shoulders, abandoned as his mind worked to remedy the situation. 

Pennywise waited, one eye wandering off to stare at the wallpaper once more. 

“I think my head is too small for you.” The boy’s shoulders slumped. He tried to picture Pennywise sleeping on the bed with his hands held out for size, as it was proper to let guests have the comfiest places to sleep when you invited them over. That’s what Ben did when he invited Bill and Georgie for a sleepover, anyway. 

Georgie whined, grasping at the sides of his pants as he looked this way and that. His bed was too small for Pennywise’s spider legs to not stick out uncomfortably, and if the clown slept beneath the bed frame, there was always the possibility of Georgie crushing Penny accidentally in his sleep. You got pretty heavy when you fell asleep, Georgie reminded himself. 

“You shouldn’t have to sleep on the floor,” He groused. “Not without a sleeping bag at least.” 

Pennywise took one look at the boy’s sad little face, amid the downy blankets and the dog and the seal and the pillows, and was instantly right beside him. 

“It’s okay. I can go back home to rest.” The clown laid a comforting hand on the boy’s shoulder, turning him just the slightest bit to playfully pretend that the seal was nipping at his nose (which could’ve been an accurate portrayal of a seal or not, Pennywise had never seen one to know for sure) but Georgie shook his head.

“It’s too cold where you live, though, Pen!” Georgie started. “You can’t go back now. Not till winter is over.” 

He pouted, which made Pennywise pout in return, unsure of why this was so important to the boy. Technically, he wouldn’t need to sleep until several months from now… which wasn’t something that he was ready to break to Georgie yet. 

“Wait! Wait! I know!” Said boy jumped where he stood.

* * *

“Goodnight, Penny.” Georgie wished him, before shutting the lid of his toy chest. He’d watched as the clown waved happily from where he’d crouched, having twisted his body around so well that his arms and his legs were pretty much at length with one another. 

Georgie had no idea if sleeping like that would be more comfortable than  sleeping on the floor, but at least Pennywise was warm now, and had all of Georgie’s toys to keep him company. 


	20. Another Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: The Turtle taking pity on IT gave each member of the Losers Club and Georgie a choice when they died: they could move on and go into the next life or they could remain on earth as ghosts and keep IT company till the end of time.

Bill had learned about death rather early in his life, but his little brother Georgie was possibly still unlearned at 6-years-old. The boy hadn’t experienced the death of a family member or a pet, as their hamster Tim was still thriving in his cage. Apart from the storybooks that Bill read during Georgie’s bedtime, or the stories that he’d learned from their kindergarten teacher that featured nasty old witches or very bad men getting their comeuppance, there was nothing in reality to drive the permanence of not longer living for the small boy. 

And there never would be, as that very same permanence had robbed Georgie of the chance when he disappeared one stormy afternoon in October. 

* * *

“Don’t call me ‘Eds’.” Eddie Kaspbrak weakly reprimanded. No air was going to his lungs, and blood was scorching him on its way out of his now empty arm socket. His vision had already been blurring by the time Richie’s tears landed on Eddie’s brow and slid down to cloud the other man’s face. 

It was painful to take, but that pain was receding like the Atlantic coastline as Eddie felt himself lifted from the physical plain. There was no one to explain it to, but the man who’d always been small and narrow-chested, even once he’d hit his late twenties, felt as a cloud might. He was still there, but wherever ‘there’ was had freed him of noticeable limbs that needed moving and pain that needed feeling. 

He was… well, he was _floating_. Quite literally. Floating from darkness to a place where darkness cracked and spread like particles - stars in a field of navy blue - peaceful but eerie in its way. 

Eddie came to a gentle stop, but had no mouth to speak or scream with when the fragments surrounding him began to shiver and collide in front of him like magnets until they resembled two, murky blue and black spheres. Light reflected within both as they leveled in front of Eddie, and as shapes materialized around them until the man was staring at rough, patchy skin wrapped around those orbs. 

Eyes. They were a pair of eyes staring at him. 

And then there was voice, ancient and all-encompassing, though Eddie and the eyes couldn’t have possibly been in a space able to echo sound. 

“Life cut too short, too soon, too fast.” It rumbled, sadly. 

“I apologize, Edward.” 

Eddie couldn’t say anything back. 

“My muses have so little time to learn their lessons, and so little wish to try in the first place.” Those eyes and that ancient beak, the only thing that Eddie could perceive, seemed to stretch languidly in the vacuum of space and time. “And yet I care for them still. I am sure you understand, child.” 

“I think you are brave enough to stave off sleep. So,” The being yawned. “I will let you back in.” 

With a wave of motion, akin to the feeling of when you were submerged in a rolling wave along the ocean shore, Eddie was swept back in by a tide of stars. 

* * *

His limbs were back, but the feeling in them was less solid than Eddie remembered. 

And there was Georgie, peering out at him from behind a linking row of pipes. 

“Eddie?” His tiny voice carried over, so clear that he could’ve been right next to Eddie and it would’ve sounded the same. “You came back too?” 

“What?” Eddie sprung away, as much as he could, at the sound of his own voice. It was also rather tiny, and sounded muffled just like it would when he’d been alive. 

He had to still be alive, waking up from a horrible nightmare and, hopefully, not opening his eyes to some dreadful purgatory. 

Oh how wrong. Poor boy. 

Georgie turned out from the macabre pipelines, shining as brilliant as his very own star, and smiled gratefully. He had two arms to wrap around Eddie. “I’m glad! I know someone down here now!” 

Eddie could barely hug back - but he _could_ hug back - as he stumbled upright with Georgie’s help. “W-where are we? Where are the others?” 

Georgie leaned into him, and Eddie realized that he was barely a head taller than the forever-young boy holding onto him so tightly. 

“They’ll probably be here soon, too.” He whispered, looking far off into the distance. If they listened closely, both children could hear screaming and cracking and creaking from far away. It was muted, somehow. “If they don’t win.” 

“We’ll have to get to It a different way, Eddie. All of us, together…” 


	21. 27 Years Later

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: I wanna see the adult losers club (adult georgie included) meet pennywise again.

“Jesus Christ, I forgot how much it stinks down here.” Richie shoved his flashlight out as far as he could, sticking it into the tunnel as if trying to make the entire void ahead light up with that one overdramatic move. 

He juddered to one side, groping around blindly against the cobbled wall after slipping through grey water. “And how fucking ha **rd** it was to move in the sewer tunnels!” 

“Calm down, spazz.” Beverly gripped the back of Richie’s shirt to help steady him, while holding a flashlight of her own. She and Richie were probably second to last to start making their way through Derry’s mainline, right in front of Stan but behind Ben, Mike, Eddie, Bill, and at the front of the line, Georgie. 

The frontman wasn’t that much younger than the rest of them, but Beverly couldn’t remember when she’d seen Bill’s kid brother look as excited and filled with glee as when he’d been six-years-old and sitting on a clown’s shoulders as they roamed around the Barrens to catch fireflies. 

Well, not a clown. Pennywise wasn’t just any run-of-the-mill clown, and never had been. Beverly supposed that warranted the kind of lovable anticipation on Georgie Denbrough’s part. She couldn’t help laughing quietly to herself, feeling like a child again as Georgie splashed ahead of them all and incurred Bill shouting after him to ‘slow down’. 

“God, he’s acting like we’re going to DisneyWorld or some shit.” Stan muttered behind her. Even in the lowlight, Beverly could see his cheeks heat up in embarrassment when she looked back over her shoulder and at the nervous grown man behind her. 

“Stan, you may have been the least happy to come back.” Beverly said, “But remember that Georgie is probably the most happy out of all of us. That counts just as much.” 

The woman wasn’t quite stern, but she was surprised to find her voice after coming back to Derry under duress. She’d left her boyfriend behind, bleeding from a broken bottle to the head (something that, when she looked back on it, had been plan of attack a la the memory of Richie doing the same to get away from Victor Criss), when the day prior to that she’d practically been a mute and pale waif. It was startling change, but now rife with color even in the dingy path to Pennywise’s cistern, a path that they all knew so well. 

The opening from their narrow channel came upon them rather quickly, but the opulent-in-so-far-as-it-was-spacious room that teemed with broken down toys and moth-eaten clothes and the calm trickle of water were all there. The sight of it, all the way up to the lid that let light from above bleed through, made everything else insignificant in comparison. Beverly’s chest constricted when she found it hard to breathe, not from the smell or musty air or the sight of the outside world peaking in. 

It was a dank, dark underground catacomb of a place, but she felt _safe_ and at home. No one would ever hurt her here, and she’d known this a dozen if not a hundred times when she’d been younger and come running straight into the Kenduskeag Canal for comfort. 

“Where is he?” 

Beverly looked away from the sight of her childhood, embodied in little tears of light against worn security blankets of varying kinds, and saw Georgie milling around the dark tower. He was already frustrated, and had clearly been welling up with tears just as Beverly had. 

“Bill? Where is he?” The man repeated. He padded around another time, making a full, craggy circle while taking steps around old dollies and the wheels of bicycles. Beverly could see more modern toys as well - LEGO sets, flip phones, sets of multicolored markers, a Skip-It - flopping around in the water, as if they’d washed away once and decided never to do so again. 

“I-I don’t know.” Bill hadn’t stuttered once since they’d all gotten back together, but he’d seemed to revert back to his childhood as well, perhaps not for the better. 

“But it’s - it’s been 27 years, that’s how long we had to wait!” Georgie jumped from a television set from the 90s, beginning to look absolutely heartbroken. “I can’t have been wrong! I counted!” 

“Counted?” Mike questioned. “You’ve counted the days until Penny wakes up for this long?” 

“Of course I did!” The younger man said, biting his lower lip in a tell that Beverly could clearly see through. She was impressed, however, that after a lifetime (for some) Georgie had still kept track of the years at most. Beverly might’ve underestimated just how much he loved that clown. 

“You hear that, you big goofball?” Beverly spontaneously clapped her hands around her mouth and shouted, astonishing the rest of the club and accidentally hitting herself in the jaw with her flashlight. The pain that followed was quite dull. “Georgie’s been counting the days till we could see you again! And so has Mike!” 

Mike shifted from one foot to the other, indignant and embarrassed but unable to object. He totally had been counting. 

“And so have I! And so has Ben, and Richie, and Eddie, and Bill, and even Stan! So you better get your pasty butt over here pronto before we trash the place in protest!” 

Her tone was slightly raspy as it bounced up and down in the cavern, defying the cool trickle of water from off in the distance. It was silent after, and for so long that Beverly’s smile began to fall… until a bright blue balloon waltzed through the air around them. 

It spun around each of them careful, like a curious animal sniffing newcomers in its domain. When the balloon bobbed in front of Georgie, the last one it was meant to spin around, the man reached out and grabbed its tassle. Beholden to the sight, Beverly and the rest of the grown Losers were reminded of a much smaller boy waiting near a storm drain, with a balloon tied around his wrist and a blinding smile on his face. 

The old, fading sidecar at the foot of the toy pile cranked open slowly, before a voice mild from disuse came around to greet them. 

And that smile from the old days returned to Georgie’s face in a heartbeat. “Pennywise!” 

He was dashing through the water, kicking up toys and the fluff leaking from within before Georgie wrapped his arms around the pale creature that hadn’t aged a day since he’d last seen them all. 

“Georgie…” The clown began, once he’d found himself dangling in the human’s grasp. “… You’re even taller than me, now!” 


	22. Naptime

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: Penny decides to take a nap and wakes up to find the kids are draped all over him using him as a pillow and he just lays there for hours not moving so he wont wake them up.

Pennywise had learned rather quickly, as the natural order of things dictated that it should, that there was a big difference between sleeping and between napping. Georgie liked to claim that there was no difference, not when you were unconscious for both, but Pennywise knew that if one were to sleep like he did, that they couldn’t wake up any old time they wanted to - like when takes a nap. 

In the end, it didn’t matter. Pennywise had always liked sleeping in any way, shape or form - scaring people really took it out of ya. 

* * *

When his eyes reopened, Pennywise felt his own retinas searing in his self-made skull. Sunlight was beaming down on him and the clown, unused to that kind of guileless mistreatment, turned his head away with a short but dangerous growl. He had no idea as to why he was sprawled in the grass on a sunny day like this when he had a perfectly good sewer to sleep in underground. 

Internally grouching over the fact, though not thinking over the ‘why’ and ‘how’ he’d gotten into this mess, Pennywise made to move, but was stopped short at the weight against his arm. The clown’s eyes swiveled around until he saw the familiar, baby-like features of Georgie Denbrough tucked against his ruffled shoulder. The boy was clinging to Pennywise as he slept, and with a quick look around, Pennywise realized that the little boy wasn’t the only one there. 

Bill wasn’t quite as close, but he was nestled on the other shoulder. Beverly was sleeping all curled up against Pennywise’s chest just a little further down from Bill, and beside her lay Mike, mostly on the thick-growing grass but with his arm splayed out and fingers within reach of one the puffy buttons of Penny’s costume. 

Beside Georgie, Eddie Kaspbrak was a curious sight as he slept while digging himself into Pennywise’s side, as close as he could possibly get while in search of comfort while Richie slept on his stomach, wrapping Pennywise’s long, long arm around himself like a makeshift blanket. 

Ben was clinging to the clown’s feet, but it was Stanley who, on his back over both of Pennywise’s stretched out legs, who looked entirely too cozy despite that not being a cozy place of rest whatsoever. 

Pennywise blinked at the realization that they’d all been ‘tuckered out’ as Ben would say, after a game of freeze tag. And, apparently, they’d decided to use _him_ , the bizarre and frightening cosmic horror from outer space, as a cushion. 

The rest of Pennywise remained still, but the clown looked at Georgie again, not entirely sure of how to assuage the situation into something more manageable (and not as weird). 

“Georgie, are we done napping yet?” The clown whispered, voice hitching involuntarily like a needle pulling up thread. In answer, the smallest child that had Pennywise’s head cradled in his arms cracked his eyes open just barely. 

Pennywise smiled, hoping to hear some confirmation from the boy. Instead, Georgie’s lips smacked once, twice, three times… and then he nuzzled closer to the alien’s head with his sleep-flushed cheeks and breathed out quietly, blowing up Pennywise’s mussed, orange tufts of hair while he did so. 

Georgie didn’t say anything after that, and the clown observed that whenever Bev or Mike or Ben or Eddie or any of the others moved and fidgeted around, they were still asleep while doing so. Some tossed, some turned - Stanley flat out rolled over twice before he settled down again with his head laid up on Pennywise’s ankle. 

The sight made Pennywise wonder if he did the same thing in his sleep, shortened version or otherwise, and he wondered if he could get away with doing it now while claiming that he’d been asleep if the kids woke up and turned on him. 

No… No, the clown didn’t try anything more than entertain that thought, while Georgie clung around his neck even tighter. Pennywise could wait until the others woke up, even if his limbs were really starting to get sore now…


	23. Kitty Kitty Kitty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not part of a prompt, but I had to write something about Pennywise being very cat-like. I also recommend you guys watch this short little video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cG_NB2cQnGU
> 
> It's Pennywise as a cat, I S2G.

 

            They were trying to study in Derry Public Library as a group. While they didn’t all have the same classes, or even go to the same school as was in Mike’s case, the Losers tended to group together as often as possible. This proved to be one of the best ideas they’d ever collectively had, as it was not only a great way to spend afternoons without being lonely but it was benefitting even the less fortunate in their club when it came to achieving a passing grade.

 

It was great for dealing with a formerly-murderous, cannibalistic clown as well, especially when Pennywise appeared out of nowhere and begged for attention.

 

The clown, bedecked in his usual Victorian, satin and silver suit, had startled ¾ of the Losers once they caught him rising slowly from behind the empty head of their group table. Pennywise’s eyes were blue as they peered over the tabletop and bore into the 7 Losers old enough to be in high school – and that enough to keep even Eddie from hyperventilating. They’d all realized at some point in the strange whirlwind that begun during their summer, after Georgie had brought home a ‘clown that lives in the sewer’, that when Penny’s eyes were blue, it was a good sign.

 

Then again, most had begun to comprehend that there was an energy surrounding the creature that couldn’t be missed after you’d fathomed it. Just like the fact that Pennywise was invisible to damn near every adult in Derry, and a great number of other kids in their town, too.

 

That energy chained depending upon Pennywise’s emotional and physical state – and to a surprising extent, the state of the Losers. Beverly had called the broadcast of rage or ire a ‘sickening crackle’ once before. And Richie had looked up one afternoon in the barrens with a gleeful glint in his eyes as he notified the rest of the gang that he could tell when Pennywise was euphoric or amused by the ‘vibrations that tickled your funny bone’ when you were near him. There were other tangible feelings that the kids got from their new, infamous-amongst-themselves mascot, but those were perhaps the most prevalent.

 

“Bill?” Richie looked at the assumed leader of the Losers’ Club, still a tiny bit rattled from the jumpstart they’d received at figuring out that the entity (God, Richie still hated clowns) was with them. “Why is It here? Where’s the cub scout with a clown leash?”

 

Pennywise had begun prowling around their table shortly upon spooking them, a wry smile on his puckered red lips. He spared a moment to glower at Richie’s terminology, and bump into the bespectacled boy’s chair as if he were playing a violent game of duck-duck-goose.

 

            “I t-told you guys, Georgie is staying at our grandparents for a w-w-week.” Bill sighed.

 

“Oh, yeah.” Tozier’s nose wrinkled – he remembered actually listening to that about half a week ago. “The ones that live in Montreal.”

 

“Th-this isn’t so bad.” Bill tried for optimism, even when he was creeped out of his skin at the feeling of Pennywise’s shoulder brushing over his calf. “At least none of us are in bed, alone, in the d-dark.”

 

Beside Bill, both Mike and Ben winced, while at the same time Ben very tentatively let his chubby hand linger in the soft orange hair on the clown’s head. In return, Pennywise sat still for a total of 10 seconds, practically purring in contentment before succeeding to the next kid down the line like the greedy monster he was.

 

“H-he’s been alternating b-between Georgie’s closet and m-mine all week. Sometimes, he just s-stands in the doorway for hours.”

 

“ _Hee hee_ , what fun!” Pennywise cooed at that, eyes shining a dismal greenish snap.

 

Eddie, on the far left, inhaled sharply when the clown reached him and nosed at his elbow experimentally. Pennywise’s eyes looked up and down and around the entire table as he traveled on all fours, and it was a wonder that the alien maintained any sort of dignity while doing so.

 

“What a fucking creep.” Eddie said softly, into his palm. He closed his eyes until Pennywise had left him in search of attention from elsewhere.

 

            He was getting nowhere, as pretty much all the Losers at the table offered up nothing in terms of blatant affection or care. Pennywise didn’t need to taste the air around them all, his motley crew of Losers and himself in their own, special bubble, to feel electric irritation and suppressed anxiety creating a stagnate tide wherever he went. It was beginning to irritate the clown, who felt like he could do nothing right for these weak little mammals when they’d insisted on him being “ _nice and courteous and less bitey, ughhh_!” and were still unsatisfied by his change of heart.

            Although Georgie Denbrough was the sweetest and the smallest little doormat that Pennywise had met in a long, long while, the once-space-dwelling creature was convinced that the kid was far more audacious than Penny had given him credit for.

 

The beast in man’s form snarled and whined and dug its protracted claws into the library’s carpet when he continued to rejected. Pennywise had already made a circle around the group and was doubling back to try again, but was being flat-out ignored by then!

It didn’t take another turn around the table for Pennywise’s temper to rear its ugly head once more, but by the time Beverly could feel and react to that crackling energy as it appeared, Stanley was already sounding a strangled yelp. On one side of the table, Mike clapped a hand over the curly-headed boy’s mouth while looking from side to side in a panic while on the other, Pennywise teeth had been lodged into the back of Stan’s hand.

 

It was only a cry for attention on the clown’s part, like a cat nipping at you to obtain some love; but fuck if it didn’t hurt as much as a tiger’s bite might.

 

“No! Bad clown!” Beverly, the most fearless of them all, smacked the clown’s bulbous forehead without missing a beat.

 

Her candor didn’t die, even when Pennywise let out an inhuman growl in her direction, and it gave Bill the courage to speak up.

 

“D-don’t bite people!” He said firmly. “We don’t bite! Drop S-Stan’s hand now!”

 

Pennywise looked even more pissed over being talked down to, but curiously – instead of sinking his teeth in deeper like he might’ve done up at Stan with the one eye that wasn’t currently wandering away like a meteor falling from orbit. His gaze creased and sagged after a second’s hesitation before Pennywise’s teeth retracted and his expression twitched from irritation to disquiet. He dropped Stan’s bloodied hand (with all fingers accounted for, thank goodness) from his mouth and pouted stubbornly, with his shoulders hunched and his long fingers clutching the edge of the table like a petulant child about to tantrum.

“Say you’re s-s-suh-sorry.” Bill commanded, nerve still kicked in despite his strengthening stutter.

 

Pennywise turned to Stan again, beguiling. “ _S-s-sUH-sOrRy._ ”

 

He giggled fiendishly at his personal taunting skills, but drew back with a hiss when Beverly kept one hand planted on the table and the other up, up, up in the air and ready to deliver another smack.

 

Bill crossed his arms, physics homework forgotten. “Mean it.”

 

            The clown’s pout grew melodramatic and he sulked, boxing himself in into an invisible space between Stan and Mike. Until that look from earlier returned, a sort of slow-down and rewire set in motion that Pennywise had no explanation for, or if he did, he didn’t want to admit that a big part of it was being around these pain-in-the-ass kids. He grumbled, but Pennywise’s huffing and puffing preceded his attempt at a genuine apology, the only kind of apology that the creature could willingly deliver.

 

In a flash, Pennywise was leaning down to clot the blood leaking from Stanley – by putting his mouth over it and keeping still to soak it all up before the Uris child bled out or became infected.  

 

“Augh!” Eddie let out a groan that was several octaves higher then he’d meant it to be, as he and Richie reeled back in tandem. “That’s even worse than the biting shit.”

 

            Stan looked positively green, but was petrified to do anything more then sit there and stare in horror as Pennywise lapped at the bite mark he’d left in the boy’s hand. His expression and general air, which could surely have been felt by the demonic-looking clown, was ignored while Pennywise continued to clean the wound. Once he’d lathered the back of Stan’s hand with enough coatings of saliva, Pennywise sat up and place one of his own enormous, gloved hands atop Stan’s.

           

            None of the children that stared in silence afterward could quite tell if the smile that Pennywise displayed was a repentant or simply self-satisfied. It seemed like no matter what the clown did, he was always smug about it – even now, Pennywise patted the hand with a pursed, feral, and faded red grin between his pale, chubby cheeks.

 

“All better!” Pennywise said brightly.  

 

 


	24. MY babies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Again, not a prompt, but I wrote something concerning the idea of Pennywise protecting its babies from sewer maintenance workers (Part of the 'An Emotion Bent' Universe). I hope you enjoy this admittedly not-finished one shot?

t looked like a man. A man curled into a ball on his side on the worn rouge carpet beside a fireplace. He was too uncannily bright even in the shadowy cart.

Carl was put off by perfect circle that the unconscious man was making, with how he’d contorted his limbs back and inward as though there were no bones inside. The man’s body arched from the tips of his ridiculously enormous shoes to the bend of his neck up to the base of his skull and the roar of flames that made up his hair. It was unnatural… like the form of a snake coiled into an eddy upon the ground.

A ground made of sprawling arms and hands, so small and pale that Carl imagined them, preyed them to be plastic doll limbs like the many that made up the tower just outside the old-fashioned carnival caravan. But they were… were twitching before Carl’s eyes, detailed and dirty and clearly belonging to something leaving, nestled beneath the clown that seemingly slept on.

“Christ.” Carl whispered, eyes the size of saucer plates.

Slept on – before eyes like two burning stars in a pitch-black sky snapped open and swiveled to meet his gaze. They locked on him and _burned_ into Carl’s soul. The man’s breath turned shallow until his lungs felt like they might be collapsing behind his ribs while he remained entranced by those frightening irises.    

           A dozen or so eyes were staring at him in the next second, from within the crooks of the clown’s body that Carl hadn’t been able to see before. None blinked nor moved from his frozen form, though Carl could make out the shape of apple-round cheeks and smudged, button noses. Dirty mops of dark, clumped hair and scrabbling, blunt nails dug into the carpet as, what Carl now understood to be several children, dug themselves out from underneath the warmth of the clown that was glaring almightily at the maintenance man.  

The soft, barely perceptible rumble from before was far from gentle and quiet now. It was thundering from within the man, who most certainly wasn’t a man with those red-rimmed eyes, until he was roaring from within. The boom of it made the entire floor shake, until it grew and expanded to quake the entire cart. Carl was stumbling back before he had time to realize what was happening.

The man screamed as, when one of the little kids was nearly out from under the man-like thing, one of it’s long, long arms unwound and struck out to cage the boy in. The movement reminded Carl of a possessive cat, hurling itself in front of its offspring to keep them from danger. But Carl couldn’t fathom the little kid – was it a kid? Or was it another beast that only appeared human? – was in more danger than himself.

           The child had a mess of copper hair on his head, and piercing eyes that trained on his form like a wild cat. He leaned forward on his thin arms and knees, unyielding to the arm trying to keep him in until it constricted and pulled the boy back into the safety.

In an instant, the clown man with yellow, inhuman eyes was standing, jumping to its enormous feet and bearing shark-like jags for teeth. Instinctively, Carl raised his arm over himself, same as the clown, only to protect himself and perhaps entreat the towering being.

“No, no, wait. I wasn’t gonna hurt him. Ple – AH!” Carl screamed; and screamed and screamed as blood came slewing from where his right arm had once been. He’d only lifted it, to hold it up in defense or as a sign of good will or, or something completely innocuous. Yet it had still been going too far, as far as this beast was concerned.

           The creature with a clown’s face advanced, mouth downturned and rearing at the corners in a great snarl. It’s arm wound back, pitched forward and Carl felt the caravan’s floor disappear below his feet as he was lifted high in the air by one giant, white glove, slowly tearing apart in favor of obsidian, stone-like claws.

Carl stared with horrified eyes and a gaping mouth. His last thoughts were nothing special, as he’d only just realized that the child that’d curiously gotten out to look at him was a short-haired, icy-eyed and cheerfully grinning girl. Not a boy.


	25. Scares, Scares, Scares (2)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: What if Georgie, or possibly one of the other kids(but honestly, I really can't get enough of Georgie-- AU's where he's alive really tug at my heartstrings), suffers from nightmares, and Pennywise helps them in some way(or at least tries to)?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this is okay, not quite fulfilling the prompt in isolation but... ya know, hey, I made myself cry a bit while writing this, so take my tears :3

_“Popcorn! Is that your favorite?”_

_Georgie nodded, unease momentarily forgotten. “Uh-huh!”_

_Beneath the sidewalk, hovering in the drain almost without a body, the clown giggled. “Mine too! Hmm! Because they pop!”_

_He laughed gleefully. “Pop! Pop!”_

_“Pop!” Georgie joined in, spring up from where he kneeled in the run-off from the pouring rain above. His laughter intermingled with Pennywise’s, until the two were practically in harmony… Until the clown stopped abruptly, and the familiar shade of blue of his wonky eyes became cold and soulless._

_Georgie stopped just as abruptly; something caviled inside the boy, something not as airy or light as the rest of the scene playing out in front of him was, but he couldn’t grasp it. Instead, Georgie played along with what were, to his young mind, the proper beats of the scene unfolding beyond his control._

_“Without your boat?” The clown’s lips smacked together, and he swallowed thickly. “You don’t wanna lose it, Georgie. Bill’s gonna kill you…”_

_Georgie’s brow scrunched, the memory of Bill proudly finishing up the S.S. Georgie a sting in the forefront of his mind._

_“…Here… Take it.” Pennywise whispered again. “Take it, Georgie…”_

_Georgie didn’t think about it much. He leaned in, unsure. He didn’t want to upset Bill. He didn’t want to disappoint his older brother. Georgie reached out, but she was sunk further back into the sewer drain by the clown, grinning in wait for Georgie to get closer, and closer, and closer…_

 

 

* * *

 

 

Georgie awoke, screaming.

 

            He jumped from where he laid, lunging up into a sitting position with a sweat-soaked forward and sour smell listing in the back of his mind, coming from beneath his too-hot covers. The knife-like skewering into his right arm was a pain which echoed into the child’s consciousness and made him instinctively press said arm close, as if he’d truly lost it as he had in the nightmare.

 Georgie kicked the covers off, revealing the wet patch beneath his legs and bottom, and was in tears over it within a matter of seconds. But of course, that wasn’t all.   

 

There was a monster under Georgie’s bed, and it came crawling out before the boy had woken up. And Georgie’s gaze snapped up at the slightest jingling of bells, making him look forward and see very familiar blue eyes looking back at him from around his bedpost.

 

            Pennywise huddled near the foot of Georgie’s bed, seemingly trying to meld into a compact shape despite his ridiculously long limbs that jaunted out into space asymmetrically. The pallor of the man-shaped creature was too striking, even in the dark, to hide the dark, ruby markings on his overly-large face or the flashing tufts of red atop his skull like a corona. His eyes were just as blue as they’d been in the dream, but searching instead of cold, and for a moment Georgie felt trapped. He was afraid, yet the little boy was almost certain he could feel the alien’s pain and worry just as strongly as the clown could. As strongly as if they were connected. Still, it didn’t shake the nightmare away entirely, and Georgie couldn’t help but be caught up in the remaining vivid images of what had transpired in his sleep.

 

Pennywise’s lips smacked together, and he swallowed visibly. “Georgie…?”

 

“I d-don’t…” Georgie’s face crumpled, lips forced together and smooth, round little face marred by agony. He was remembering weeks before as well, the trigger to these violent dreams, where the monster that lived beneath Derry really was a monster, whom Georgie had seen kill – right in front of him.

 

“It – It’s hard to – !” Georgie chest heaved up and down, breath becoming shallow and difficult to keep up. He began wheezing, head bobbing up and down through the sudden panic that sank into his limbs.

 

“I can’t breathe – !” The little boy tried, gasping. “I-I can’t – ! I’m scared!”

 

He tried to say more, but Georgie opened his mouth wide and nothing came out. There was something heavy in his throat, a lump that had grown too big and was now suffocating him. The child didn’t know if anyone

 

            The clown at the foot of the bed watched, wide-eyed and rearing back slowly, unsure of what to do or say until Georgie garbled out. “I’m scared! Penny!”

 

            The fear was so uncontrollable and so great, that Georgie didn’t fight it when Pennywise immediately leaned forward and grabbed him. The alien brought Georgie forward and withstood it when the little boy clung onto him, wrapping around him like a lifeline and hugging the daylights out of Pennywise. The boy’s blunt nails carved into the expanse of satin and lace frills of Pennywise’s chosen costume, as he sought warmth and comfort from a beast that had never provided it before then.

            He could feel it as Georgie trembled from head-to-toe, shaking with fear. It should’ve made him salivate and want to devour the child; as he’d so often done before with other humans more formidable and less afraid than this boy. But Pennywise wasn’t starving over the scent that he could practically taste on his tongue. This fear was Georgie’s, and despite his very nature, Pennywise felt nothing but a mounting and very unpleasant sickness over it.

 

Chills threatened the clown’s spine, making the surface of his pale, inhuman skin clammy and damp. Inside, Pennywise felt a syrupy, unpleasant ooze down the back of his throat and a bubbling in his stomach that he’d never experienced before, but it was difficult to take. The association between Georgie’s tangible fear and the reason for why it existed in the first place was making the cosmic entity _nauseous_.

 

As if seeing his only friend afraid of him wasn’t awful enough.

 

“You… You’re afraid of me…” Pennywise had said nothing else of consequence for the past few weeks. Not since he’d disposed of Reginald Huggins and Victor Criss in front of this boy. “Your fear… Still afraid… still...”

 

The clown had tried, day tumbling into night and night tumbling into day, to try and sway the little boy’s opinion of Pennywise back to someplace good. All those attempts had truly been for naught, for now the boy was having nightmares because of him. Pennywise didn’t understand why, but feeling sick because of what it led to firsthand – seeing and feeling Georgie’s distress so uncomfortably close.

            The image of being shot down into the crumbling ball of dirt and ocean, of being exiled into this small space to rot and consume without thought paused reality and Pennywise found himself shuddering. Georgie’s grip grew tighter on the clown’s suit, but Pennywise was repulsed and finding it difficult to breathe himself.

 

“I’ll go away now, Georgie…” The clown’s voice broke into fragments. “I’ll Go AWaY aNd nevER come BAcK. So… The NIGHtmARes go Away FOReVer.”

 

He tried to pull the child away, off him and back to bed. Pennywise’s signature smile was wobbly and didn’t look right, going across the pale flesh he’d made a long, long time ago. With gentle strength, the monster tore Georgie away enough to see the boy’s tear-stained face and how red it’d gotten.

 

Pennywise’s smile wobbled further, but he didn’t show his teeth to try and be more genuine. He didn’t dare. “OKay? Okay, Georgie?”

 

Georgie’s heaving breathes were calming down, despite it all. The tension in the boy’s circus-themed bedroom was too much, but Georgie’s reddened face was smoothing over. He looked a little stunned, even.

            Pennywise didn’t understand what was happening, when one moment the boy was bawling his eyes out and the next he was pressing his hands against Pennywise’s face, brushing along the stripes that staked through his glowing eyes.

 

“Don’t cry.” Georgie said hoarsely. “Please don’t cry.”

 

The little boy’s eyes watered, lips quivering as he started up again. Georgie threw himself forward, hiding in the crook of the clown’s neck and mumbling thickly against his shoulder. “Don’t cry, and don’t go! Don’t leave!”

 

Pennywise sighed shakily, obliquely baffled and a little afraid to check and see if his own eyes were leaking as well. He held Georgie close, embracing the impossibly tiny human against his sternum like his life depended on it.

 

“Don’t leave, Penny. Don’t.” Georgie rasped. “Please. I love you. I love you! Please, don’t leave.”


	26. Monster Crush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, this is based on an idea from a dear someone on tumblr, and I rather liked it because I'm a sucker for Monster/Human pairings. It's super cute - Good!Pennywise has a crush on some random human lady. Idk if this is an idea that requires it's own expansion/story, but hey if you guys like it, let me know!

Georgie’s tongue stuck out between his lips as he squinted at the stapled sheets of paper on his desk. He hated math. He hated math so much. Or, to be more fair, he hated being on a time crunch while doing math, since Georgie was average at addition and multiplication during lessons. In frustration, the little boy sketched at the blank margins of each page as he got to them, drawing circles, stars, trees and cats. By the time he’d gotten to the last piece of paper, Georgie had given up entirely on finishing the entire timed packet and decided to turn his work in early.

Georgie felt guilty, but he didn’t want to be reduced to frustrated tears like the last time they’d taken a timed test. He hoped and prayed that the teacher wouldn’t get angry at him, though something told Georgie to doubt that crushing thought as he sidled up to Ms. Kerry’s desk.

Ms. Livingston, his original teacher, had been called out for a family emergency. In her place, a young woman called Ms. Kerry had claimed the position of substitute for Georgie’s 2nd grade class. Ms. Kerry had proven to be very nice the first week she’d been there, and Georgie didn’t think she’d be as cruel as some of Billy’s teachers, who he’d complained about since his freshman year had started.

Ms. Kerry wasn’t demanding or likely to call on you if you didn’t raise your hand and clearly didn’t know the answer. She was kind and she was pretty, like a Disney princess.

Georgie found her smile to be the prettiest, being that it was so kind and reached her soft, dark eyes. Yet, it didn’t distract him from his nervousness. He stepped forward tentatively, handing in his work when Ms. Kerry offered a hand to take it.

           “You did very well, Georgie.” Ms. Kerry said as she flipped through the pages of the boy’s multiplication packet. “I bet that by the time the school year ends, you’ll be able to fill up the whole pack in less than 10 minutes.”  

Georgie shifted from foot to foot, teeth gnawing on the inside of his cheek. He dared to look up from beneath his lashes when his teacher stopped on the final page.

“I’m sorry for all the drawings.” The child murmured. “I know I’m not supposed to doodle on assignments. I just forgot this time.”

Ms. Kerry frowned. She went back to the papers in her hand, and Georgie squirmed when her gaze held on his drawing of himself and Pennywise sailing on a much bigger version of the S.S. Georgie. He might’ve babbled on – about how it was technically unfair to have such a huge blank space at the end of the packet, and how Georgie always thought best when he was doing something that he _liked_ – that being drawing. He might’ve, had a smile not bloomed on Ms. Kerry’s face.

“There’s no reason to be sorry, sweetie.” She reassured Georgie. “This is very creative!”

Georgie stared. “Really?”

           “Yes, really.” The young woman nodded, laughing quietly. “I like the boat, and is this a clown?”

She held the packet out for Georgie to look at beside her, and Georgie wasted no time in crossing around the wooden desk to point at his friend’s likeness. “Yeah, that’s my friend Pennywise and me! I told him yesterday that it’d be so cool if we could build a boat and sail it in the ocean. It’d look better if I had color pencils, though. Or markers!”

           Ms. Kerry nodded along, her smile growing. “It’s very well done. In fact, I think it deserves a sticker. Would you like one?”

 

* * *

         

“And she thought my idea about the boat was great! She’s so nice!” Georgie said. He frowned suddenly, eyebrows scrunched. “Nicer than Ms. Livingston, even.”

The youngest Denbrough child had raced to the Neibolt house on Bill’s Silver, which Georgie had gotten to borrow while his brother went camping with Stan and the other boy scouts in Derry’s coalition (whatever that was). Usually, when something good happened to him, the little boy would’ve raced home to tell Bill first.

           Pennywise, sitting against the peeling wall with his knees up to his chest, was a good substitute however.

Pennywise nodded along, smiling and reminding Georgie of Ms. Kerry yet again. “Nice! Georgie! That’s nice…”

           His friend giggled. “I know. I said so already! And I wanna draw her something to tell her so!”

The boy reached into his backpack and shuffled around inside until he pulled out the sketchbook he’d gotten for his birthday. It matched Bill’s sketchbook (as a matter of fact, Georgie was sure that Bill had bought it without their parents’ help) but when the younger brother opened it up, the pictures weren’t quite as neat and clean as Bill’s.

           “Wanna help me? I brought color pencils!” Georgie looked up at the wiley clown, whose red hair shone from the waning sun from the windowpane. “You like coloring, right?”

Pennywise grinned, nodding once again but with more enthusiasm than last time. He preferred coloring the pictures that Georgie and Bill made to trying to draw them himself, that was for sure. He watched as his little friend carefully tore out one of the thick pieces of paper and handed it out.

“‘Kay, this is her! I got most of the sketching parts done before class was over, but I think you’ll color it better. I want it to be perfect.” Georgie shook his finger through the air sternly. “Be careful!”

“I will! I will! I will!” Pennywise chanted. He took the paper into his enormous hands as though it were fine china.

Looking down, the clown didn’t blink once, unbeknownst to his smaller companion handing him a pair of black and brown pencils. Pennywise’s mind was blank while he observed the picture of Georgie’s teacher. Georgie was already swell at drawing, especially for his age, but the eldritch creature found itself stuttering at the image like he’d never done before with any picture Georgie had drawn and shown him.

           The fluttery feeling in his chest was a strange sort of pleasurable and uncomfortable, that which made heat pool beneath the made-up flesh of his chest and his hands beneath the gloves. Pennywise didn’t quite know in that moment if he wanted to keep feeling such a strange, unknown effect or if he badly wanted it to stop.

           “Ew, Penny!” Georgie cried, snapping the clown out of his trance. “You’re gonna get drool all over it!”


	27. Monster Crush 2: The Search for Curly's Gold

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wrote more, yay? Warning for a homophobic slur and sexual implications.

“Aren’t you going to get on the bus too, George?” Ms. Kerry asked.

 

She and her young student were standing at the front doors of the school, trying to outlast the waning sea of kids as they hopped onto their respective buses and kids that were running toward their parents. Although she hadn’t been there long, Ms. Kerry – or Barbara as she was known outside of the classroom – had developed some insights while volunteering to see that the children of Derry Elementary were able to leave the school safely. One insight, belonging to one child in her very class, was that she had never met George Denbrough’s parents.

 

That itself wasn’t too unusual, as Barbara hadn’t been teaching for the absent Ms. Livingston’s classroom for longer than a couple months. Nor had she been living in Derry for quite as long as the student body. Barbara hadn’t met the parents of every other child she’d taught in class either, and nothing about Georgie Denbrough was too off-putting to warrant gossip from the other teachers there.

And yet, Barbara thought about how she’d only ever met Georgie’s older brother Bill. Bill, and a few of his friends from the nearby high school, flocking toward the grade-school child often, like Georgie was at constant risk of floating off someplace. Barbara thought William Denbrough to be a fine young man – polite, thoughtful, and disciplined – but perhaps it was those qualities, and Bill’s solemn loyalty toward his younger brother, that deserved her scrutiny. She figured that most boys his age would be easily embarrassed by a little brother who still endeared himself to others with blithe affection and silly, sweet drawings of clowns and sailboats.

 

On the contrary, Bill was nearly like a mother and father all wrapped into one disconcerting teen boy, from what Barbara had witnessed. He guarded Georgie closely, let himself be tugged around and chattered to nonstop, complimented the little boy’s art as well as his academic progress.

Polite, thoughtful, and disciplined… Barbara thought Bill to be that way solely for his little brother’s sake, and the thought was troubling.   

 

“No, actually, my fff –” Georgie Denbrough paused. “I mean, I’m gonna ride home on my bike! Before I give it back to Bill, again. Said I have to start getting used to being without one soon.”

 

“Oh, well then I think you’d best go and get it.” Barbara said gently, while keeping a hand on his narrow shoulder. “But after the buses leave, of course.”

 

“Of course!” Georgie jumped in place, smiling so brightly that his teacher couldn’t help but smile back.

They waited for the lagging kids to disperse and for the road to become clear and safe for Georgie to ride his bike on together. It didn’t take long, despite the flux of people coming and going, though Barbara’s careful hold on the little boy beside her lingered for a bit longer. She mulled over her earlier thoughts, having a back and forth between mild concern and reprimanding for herself, for making a mountain out of a molehill over such a small thing that could be nothing.

 

Nevertheless, Ms. Kerry let him go when Georgie turned around to the dingy bike rack to unlock his brother’s bicycle and shuffle it out into the afternoon sun. The boy didn’t get on it, but settled for walking the bike while making his way down the road to one fixed point of empty space.

 

* * *

 

Georgie had lit up the instant he saw a flicker of light, then color, invade the area. Pennywise appeared from out of thin air and couldn’t hope to blend in with the horde of trees around his person just as he couldn’t fit in with the concrete beneath his jingly shoes. That hardly mattered to the boy that Pennywise called his best friend, however. Georgie was entirely caught up in how nice it was to see the clown there to walk him home from school, just as Penny had promised to be.

It always made Georgie feel all fuzzy inside, even though no one else could see the clown standing there but himself. That was unless Bill, and by extension Stan, Eddie, and Richie, were there with Pennywise some times.

 

“Hiya Georgie!” Penny’s strange vocals carried frivolity and clear fondness. Georgie skipped toward him, lugging Bill’s bike in stride despite it being much too large for the little boy’s thin arms and small frame.

 

The alien’s entire body was frozen against the backdrop of nature, but his expression was fully animate, and his eyes were a rich sea-green. “Ready to go?”

 

“Ye – Oh! Wait!” Georgie spun on his heels and looked out toward the front of Derry Elementary. It took him a second, but soon the boy was pointed in one direction. “Bye, Ms. Kerry!”

 

The woman shifted on her feet, head perking up as she registered her name being called. Ms. Kerry looked up and narrowed in on Georgie as he waved farewell cheerfully. It was enough just for his teacher to wave back, smiling that soft smile that made her eyes turn up and her features vivify.

            It was enough for Georgie to call the matter of saying goodbye settled, but for Pennywise, her smile was enough to make reality lose its grip on his sanity.

 

Georgie was halfway up the sidewalk when he realized that the gaunt, lanky clown was not walking beside him. He peered over his shoulder and saw Pennywise standing in the same place he’d been 10 seconds ago, not having moved at all after hailing Georgie as always.

 

            “Penny?” Georgie inquired. He called the alien’s name several times, but didn’t get a response, making the little boy worry his brow.

 

“Penny? Are you okay?” Georgie asked for the fourth time, setting the kickstand for Silver up so that he could keep it still before turning back. He reached Pennywise and wrenched hesitantly at the ruffled cuff of Penny’s hand. Nothing.

            “Pennywise?” Georgie was louder, leaning into his friend’s personal space (more than usual) as though to block the tall creature’s gaze. It was impossible, seeing as how Pennywise was so very tall and Georgie was so very not, and Georgie compromised this irritating factor by following Penny’s line of vision all the way back to the school.

 

Ms. Kerry was a mere outline at the front door, unlocking it with her school-commissioned set of keys. Georgie was confused as he stood, watching with Pennywise while the dark-haired woman slid in through the front doors and disappeared into the hallway.    

 

“…Did you wanna say goodbye, too?” Georgie stared up at Pennywise, still frozen. “You could’a just made yourself visible then, Penny. Ms. Kerry would’ve waved to you too then… probably…”

 

It took several moments for Pennywise to regain consciousness, and by then he was gulping down the saliva that had unthinkingly pooled at his lower lip. Georgie caught strange alteration between green and amber in his friend’s eyes before Pennywise was back to normal, shakily latching onto Georgie’s outstretched hand.

 

“S-sorry…” Was all the clown said in return. He shrugged violently or shook violently, or shivered from his toes to the top of his orange head afterward, but Georgie couldn’t pick which before they were off again.  

 

* * *

 

 “Hey, G-Georgie.” Bill greeted him. He loosened one hand from inside his jacket pocket and let Georgie wrap their arms together, making them bump into each other in an awkward side-hug.

 

Alongside Bill, Richie waved a few fingers. “Hey ya squirt.”

 

“Richie’s staying over?” Georgie asked immediately. He gazed up at Bill from the crook of his arm, happy to be hugged for little bit longer than was necessary, even though it was being clingy. If it was in front of Richie, then it was okay after all.

 

            “You’re not t-the only one who missed me like crazy, d-dork.” Bill smiled. It stretched into a full grin when Georgie lightly punched him in the side and pouted.

 

“Come on, don’t tell the kid that.” Richie bemoaned. “This town is small, Big Bill. Shit spreads fast and I don’t wanna deal with more rumors that you an’ me are fags.”

 

            “ _Dude._ ” Bill hissed. He bared his teeth, like a lion snarled in warning, before changing the topic quickly so as to avoid hearing Georgie repeat what Richie said like a cocky parrot. “Did Pen walk y-y-you home, then, Georgie?”

 

“Yep! He picked me up from school, just like he said he would!” Georgie said.  

 

“Good thing, or we’d probably be ordered to kick his ass if he didn’t.” Richie mused, rifling through his backpack on Bill’s bedroom floor.

“Pennywise d-didn’t just meet you halfway, did he?” Bill pressed. “N-not like last time when he crawled outta the sewer three blocks f-from here…”

 

“No. He came and got me after I waited outside school, like I was supposed to.” Georgie replied, rolling his eyes. “‘M not a baby, Bill. Sheesh. But my teacher waited with me before Penny got there too, so quit worrying already.”

 

“Actually…” The image of Pennywise with his changing eyes following Ms. Kerry’s footsteps flashed in Georgie’s mind. “It was kinda, sorta weird though – when I said goodbye to Ms. Kerry an’ Pen just sort of… stopped working.”

 

Bill and Richie eyed the little boy, the latter scoffing slightly under his breath. What the hell did that mean?

 

“He likes Ms. Kerry too, I think… but in a weird way.” Georgie explained slowly.

 

“A w-weird way?” Bill’s eyebrow rose.

 

“Yeah, I mean, his face got all weird an’ red and he was sorta shaking.” The boy said. “When I tried to talk to him, Penny wasn’t even listening. He just kept staring at Ms. Kerry.

 

Georgie thought for an instant. “It was kinda like you when you see Beverly and you space out in the middle of nowhere.”

 

Richie, who’d been unusually quiet up until that moment, snorted loudly. He only attempted to cover his mouth and feign embarrassment when Bill speared him with a fierce glare. Even so, their bespectacled friend couldn’t help interjecting, and making everything worse.

 

“Hey, Georgie. It sounds like the clown is _hot for teacher_.” Richie piped up with a smirk. Bill immediately swatted at him, missing his ear by an inch. Richie laughed crudely and obnoxiously in defense.

 

“You mean Penny… likes her?” Georgie asked, beaming yet nonplussed by the fighting. It was no worse than when he and Bill roughhoused. “You think he like-likes her?!”

 

“Likes her, likes her bod, is probably thinkin’ of going to 3rd base with her right now… same diff.” Richie presumed with a shrug.

 

“S-shut up already.” Bill commanded, the flush of his face already dying down. He looked back at his little brother when Richie had skipped far enough away to avoid being smacked upside the head.

 

Georgie was twisting his sleeves into knots and frowning deeply. “He’s worse than you though, Billy. I don’t think Penny’s ever talked to a girl… I mean, one that’s his size. Like a grown-up –

girl.”

 

“A woman,” Richie came back. “The clown’s probably never even met a real woman in his whole, entire life. Bet you his right hand is the only action he’s ever gotten.”

 

            “Richie!” Bill shoved his peer back by the shoulder, malevolently glaring at him.

 

Meanwhile, Georgie’s head reared, expression twisted into sincere confusion.

 

“What does that mean?” He asked.

 

Unfortunately for him, Richie’s cross-eyed staring contest with Bill in that moment – the kind that signaled a silent conversation between one boy to the other that Georgie could not partake in – finished with Tozier slouching where he stood. He was thoroughly bummed out that he couldn’t just rip into the glorious subject of masturbation and ruin the childhood innocence of his best friend’s little brother.  

 

* * *

 

Pennywise had a mediocre concept of time, as far as being able to tell how many days had passed into night from one exorbitant event to the next. Living eternally did that to a person.  

 

            The color pencils rolled along the creaking and dust-laden floor beneath the clown’s weight, and he flicked through one after the other, listing their names in his mind without worry of mixing them up. Although 29 Neibolt House was lit by nothing more than moonlight through grimy windows, Pennywise could see just fine without electricity working in the asbestos-ridden walls.

 

He was a lucky extraterrestrial indeed, to be able to find companionship among plucky and unlucky children like the Losers Club. The unfortunate events that seemed to rattle them up like they were a direct order of the cosmos (which Pennywise wouldn’t doubt was true, knowing the Turtle) made nearly every day interesting. Just as well, Penny was always elevated whether one day or one week was boring. The kids liked having him around, of all things.

 

Being wanted made time speed up and become more precious.

 

Picking up a dark red pencil, Pennywise began humming one of the first songs that he’d ever heard on Earth. It had, of course, been a nursery rhyme, something to soothe energetic little children in the past, but also something that sounded a tad grim in the present. It worked on Pennywise himself often even with that in mind, as much a coping mechanism to the alien as Eddie’s pills or Richie’s jokes.

 

It wasn’t working now. Not with the sight of Georgie’s teacher imprinted on his mind as it was. Pennywise had spent an unknown amount of time trying to draw her face as he’d seen it earlier that day. The man-shaped creature could remember that the sun had been out and up, shining on her dark face and over her yellow dress.

            Georgie’s teacher was waving on a constant loop in Pennywise’s brain, waving and smiling happily as he and Georgie prepared to leave. He’d sworn that in one millisecond, the woman’s movements had hitched, and that her eyes had lingered on the space that he’d taken up. Pennywise swore that she’d seen him despite the enforced impossibility – as the ‘monster’ of Derry, Pennywise the Dancing Clown was seen only when It wanted to be seen.

            But somehow, they’d made eye contact and Penny had been shocked to the core. So shocked and overheated inside that he’d forgotten who and where he was, until Georgie practically woke him up again.

 

Pennywise mumbled unintelligibly, like a gremlin hard at work. That fluttering inside his chest and skull, the same from a while back now, was getting stronger and less manageable by the second.

 

The clown tried so hard – so very, very hard, to do justice to Ms. Kerry’s face, and keep his coloring within the lines.


	28. Baby Fluff

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Takes Place in the "An Emotion Bent"/Parent!wise au where Pennywise raises the Losers. Pure fluff.

“I’m gonna geeeeeeeet you!” Pennywise sing-songed. He raised his enormous arms and mimed bear claws with his long fingers.

Mikey laughed, loud and wild, in front of him. Pennywise’s new son jumped in place, tiny body rocking from here to there as he tried to put all his energy into the world. He tended to wiggle about when he became too excited, as Pennywise had learned. It was a marvel to the Entity that Mikey enjoyed playing chase as much as he did, but also an assurance that spiriting the toddler away had been the right decision. There was a tightness building in the clown’s chest that he realized signified pride as well as affection.

           Even while sunlight streamed from the shambled windows of 29 Neibolt, Pennywise was unperturbed by the oddness of ‘pretending’ to chase another. Not that Mikey was running for the hills.

“…Gonna get yooooooouuuu…” Pennywise repeated, quietly.

He started to crouch until his knees hit the planks of wood below them. The floor of the house was dusty and creaking, but sturdy enough to make the sound of Pennywise’s knees thumping against it sound like thunder. The clown was crawling toward his son, inch by inch, feeling amusement singe his insides as Mikey grinned behind his tiny hands.

“No! No get me!” Mikey cried. He’d been momentarily distracted by the jingling of Pennywise’s bells while they knocked against the clown’s broad chest. The sound was so pretty and pleasant, and Mikey couldn’t help but wonder where it came from every time he heard one chime.

Pennywise reached the toddler, but didn’t snatch him up in a flash as he might’ve done, had this been any other inferior being. Instead, he wriggled a finger beneath Mikey’s chin, and scritch-scratched the boy’s tummy as gently as possible. To his satisfaction, Mikey bounded in place before turning on his clumsy feet and trying to ‘escape’.

He could already walk by the time Penny had found him, but Mikey was still uncoordinated. The boy would’ve, no doubt, fallen to the messy floor had his father not immediately grabbed him and tossed him up into the air.

“Got you!” Pennywise cried, sweeping the boy into his arms. Mikey went, kicking and screaming with delight, before twisting around in the clown’s grasp. Mikey gifted Pennywise with a big, open-mouthed smile, and reached out for his papa fervently.

           “I got you! I got you!” Penny chanted tauntingly, though he brought Mikey closer like the kid wanted him to. Mikey laughed raucously again when the clown fell for his ploy, and got a slobbery, open-mouthed kiss on his deep red nose.

“Ewww, Mikey!” Pennywise teased, returning the favor. He didn’t cow his drool from dripping down the boy’s chubby little face while planting a smooch on his cheek.

“Eww!” Mikey repeated. He batted at his cheek and mouth, trying to wipe away the icky substance. The boy glared at Pennywise’s bucktoothed grin, but didn’t mean it. He was only a little boy, after all.

The child stared at the painted face ahead of him, momentarily considering with eyes that were too wise for his soft skull. Mikey reached up and pet Pennywise’s nose, wiping away the spittle there softly. “Got you.”

In that moment, Pennywise felt that if he could’ve spontaneously combusted from the zap, lightening-rod-esque feeling of concern and sincerity ricocheting off Mikey, he would’ve. The constriction inside his chest rose into his throat, deadlights be damned.  

“Yes. YOu gOt mE.” He repeated.  


	29. Baby Fever

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Parent!wise AU: Eddie is sick. 
> 
> Yes, I'm actually sick too.

Eddie screamed the instant he was awake. He’d opened his eyes, hoping that the sun might stream in through the windows to his and Mikey’s room, but could only see darkness. And more darkness. 

He cried out when his screaming echoed in the void around him, scaring himself to tears. They rolled down his flushed cheeks, and Eddie was treated to the return of an excruciating ache inside his skull. He weeped, remembering that he had arms and hands and fingers when they rose from within his cocoon of a blanket to press against his forehead. 

Eddie moaned as the pain increased until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. Everything hurt then, and it was too difficult to see even in pitch blackness. Nevertheless, when a source of light broke behind Eddie’s closed eyes, the boy opened them to find it.  

The air inside the caravan was crisp but warm, any smell of sewage or sign of damp underbrush was nonexistent. The room inside was not unlike a humbler version of the homes along Maine Street, with its elongated mauve walls and the fireplace on the opposite side of the nest. Eddie watched from beneath the covers as the dwindling flames before him plumed. At once, the little boy was mesmerized by the shifting hues of green of the fire while it crackled and burned in its furnace. His wide eyes were the only things visible that could reflect the unnatural occurrence, until the boy was pulled away from the sight. 

Pennywise sat in the nest, taking up a wide berth that little Eddie couldn’t possibly hope to fill up on his own. He lifted the child into his lap, stroking through the child’s sweaty hair while his painted brow fell. 

“What’s the matter, Eds?” The clown whispered. “Does it hurt? Awfully? Tell me, mouse, and I’ll make it diSaPPear.” 

The boy in his lap looked up, eyes watery. The only answer that Eddie could provide was a wobbly frown and a whimper of ‘Mama’ before he reached out with heavy arms and tried to hold onto his guardian tightly. Eddie had not much strength to begin with, the force of his illness had rendered him completely feeble. The four-year-old had been reduced to reclaiming Pennywise as ‘Mama’ when Pennywise himself had thought Eddie’d outgrown the title. Penny was much more than Sonia Kaspbrak would ever be, and besides, the entity had gotten attached to being ‘Pen’ to both of his boys. 

Sighing, the larger figure drew Eddie up until he felt the internal heat rolling off Eddie’s clammy skin. Pennywise was still endeared to the younger of his charges, just as he was to Mikey whom, with a quick look in that direction, was still sleeping in the nest as well so that he was not alone in the Neibolt house. Pennywise nuzzled Eddie beneath his chin and stroked his thin back, mind alternating in his harried worry for the child’s sake. Pennywise knew that agonizing over Ed’s cold would not make it any better - and that perhaps keeping him down in the cistern was not the smartest idea - but he… he couldn’t help himself. 

The constant worry, though exhausting and bizarre, kept Pennywise alert and protective at the very least. The thought of leaving Eddie to fend for himself when he was in pain made the alien’s throat burn and close. Tribulations like these tended to do that, Penny had realized - make the clown feel the body he’d chosen like it really was all Pennywise had. 

“Bad dream.” Eddie’s little sobs had trickled down to shoulder-shaking sniffles. He mumbled into the familiar silver costume, but Pennywise could hear him perfectly. 

“Bad dream?” His father repeated, inflection high and words strewn like an exclamation. 

“Mm.” Eddie squeaked. “Couldn’t find you. You… you ‘re gone away, in the dark.” 

“They took you away from me.” Eddie tried to burrow into Pennywise’s skin, with the way he pushed his entire body into the ruffles he’d learned to trust. 

Dreamscapes could be symbolic, but their effects and hints after the fact weren’t to be taken lightly. Especially when, when Pennywise considered the implications of who ‘they’ could possibly be referring to, Eddie potentially possessed the mental faculty to physically traverse through mental planes. 

With an agitated throat, Pennywise swallowed and berated himself. Eddie was too young, and his Shine was dimmed by illness… He was so, so small and technically weaker than Mike (still asleep when Penny looked)… too young and small, and weak to have a premonition. 

The clown lifted his son from where he’d burrowed and managed to look at the child’s stricken face. Pennywise brushed away his trails of tears, noting with a flimsy, poor excuse for a smile that they were similar to the blood markings his clown persona wore. 

“It hurts.” Eddie moaned, trying to clasp the fingers that stroked his cheeks and around his ears. “They hurt.” 

Eddie welcomed it when Pennywise let him return to the space of his broad, silken chest and when the clown curled inward. Soon, Eddie was safely coddled in a bear hug, suspended in Pennywise’s arms while the clown dragged the both of them closer to Mikey’s resting place. With only minor jostling, Pennywise successfully moved the other, still sleeping, boy close so that they could all be together. 

Craning his neck down into an unnatural, twisting angle, Pennywise faced Eddie’s drying gaze. Something like contentment bloomed inside the alien when, in the back of his mind, Pennywise remembered that Eddie was no longer afraid of his father’s face. All he saw when Eddie looked at him, with sleepy and bleary eyes, was trust.

“No one could take me away from you, sweet boy.” His words slithered out like the hissing of a snake. Calming and soft. “And no one could take you away from me. _No one, not even bad dreams._ ” 


	30. Baby Egg

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parent!wise AU

Ben startled at the sound of rustling and a tongue clicking above him. He froze for a moment, then doubled down on keeping his head in his crossed arms. 

He wasn’t normally this way, not even when he was incredibly upset. Ben wasn’t that stubborn or capable of holding grudges, and was predisposed to being a peacemaker. Then again, most children weren’t fond of an unhappy home or the tension of an irritated atmosphere. But Ben, being sensitive like he was, was unbearably afraid of it. 

“Ohhhh, are you hiding from me?” The sound of Pen’s voice, low and apologetic, was an instant mood-changer. Though his eyes began to water, (pathetically) Ben squeezed them shut tightly and curled into a smaller ball. He tried to shake off the presence that hung above him like a watchful moon.  

He had been trying to hide. Ben had forgone playing outside in the weedy fields before their home - shying away from the rough and tumble with his siblings so that he could spend the day smothered in blankets in their room. Ben hadn’t felt like playing, not after the last time when he’d found a book by the crosstreet, matted with blood. 

Ben hadn’t been able to piece all the words together in the thin pages of the childrens’ book, but he’d been enjoying the challenge of trying to read it. Well, he’d enjoyed it very much until Richie had ratted on him and the book was ripped away from his curious fingers. Ben had watched it sink into the canal, knowing with an equally sinking heart that all the pictures and words would’ve melted from the sheer amount of water they absorbed.      

“Don’t be like that.” The clown drawled. “PLEase, don’t be mad at me.” 

Pennywise’s pleas were sincere enough to make Ben suck in a breath. The five-year-old hated himself, for he was already starting to cry. His shoulders shook with the effort to keep them in, and there was no doubt that he’d have the hiccups soon. Ben didn’t have to look, although the bundle of covers above his head were lifted easily, revealing him, to know that his father was just as upset. 

“I’m sorry, precious. I shouldn’t have done it.” Pen was on all fours, leaning in to bump Ben’s forehead with his nose. “Did I frighten you?” 

“No!” Ben mewed, not wanting the clown to be upset. He shook his head furiously to emphasize the fact, openly crying. 

Pen chirred softly, already wrapping the round boy up in his claws and bringing him closer. “ _The last thing I want to do is scare you. You know that, don’t you?_ ” 

Ben nodded vigorously - he did know that. He just couldn’t stop crying now that he’d started. It was too difficult by now to tell Pennywise why he’d been so adamant about remaining upset, though Ben posited it in his mind then as he had the night before. 

 _I just don’t understand._  

Penny nuzzled the top of the boy’s sandy head, petting the side of his face until the tears subsided enough and let Ben see clearly again. “I have something that’s gonna make you feel bet~ter~! ” 

He tickled beneath the little boy’s ear, prodding Ben to look up as he presented a small surprise with a flouncy ‘Ta-Da!’ right before the child’s bright brown eyes. It was an oval, wrapped in colorful purple and orange foil, sitting in the palm of Pennywise’s ginormous gloved hand. Ben tried not to let his excitement show too much, but he was already grabbing for it by the time he made eye-contact with the object. 

Pen knew that chocolate eggs were Ben’s favorite candy. And a surefire way to get the still-young boy to forgive Pennywise, and become cheery and soft and considerate again. Flickers of shared excitement thrummed in both of their hearts while Ben unwrapped the present and teethed through it. He made a noise of approval, like a happy, yapping little dog, at the taste of the egg - chocolate all the way through. Pennywise couldn’t help but share in the glee that Ben felt, feeling it in a mind that was once again at ease. The alien truly didn’t like it when any of his children were mad at him.

He’d leaned in to watch, but reared back when Ben broke off a piece of his gift and waved it in front of Penny’s face.  

“Ohooo…” Pennywise wiped away a smudge of filling on Ben’s cheek with a gentle claw. “Awww, you wanna SHaRe with me?” 

Ben squeaked affirmatively, twisting about in his seat to try and fit the piece of candy into the clown’s mouth. Pennywise bounced Ben on his knee, getting into gear with only a moment’s notice so that he could accept the offering without grimacing. 

Pennywise snatched the bit of chocolate with a melodramatic snarl, grinning widely between chews as Ben shrieked with laughter. It was worth it to keep a straight face while the confection slid down his throat with deliberate slowness. Worth it to see his little boy happy once again, as he should’ve been, although Pennywise instinctively wanted to spit out the candy even after it’d disappeared down his gullet. 

Yet, he endured it with a smile on his face, for Ben’s sake. 


	31. Baby Smile

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parent!wise AU

It doesn’t take much to skitter into the house without any of the children noticing, even when he’s just about flying down the hallway. 

The scent of human blood had not worried him at first, not when he was sitting in the cistern where bodies hung suspended by the dozen. The odds were that a little blood was bound to float through the air. 

But then that blood was tainted by one of the children, and it was as if the fear of starvation had transcended and doubled into a peculiar panicked feeling within the monster of Derry. 

He found Richie face-down on the living room floor, arms and legs sprawled about like the dilapidated panels of ceiling and carpet surrounding him. Pennywise realized what it was in an instant - the boy had jumped off the sunken couch for some superfluous reason that his father didn’t even want to get into. He’d done it in the middle of the night, as well, when no one else was there to question his snap judgement. He was a little daredevil. A little idiot if Pennywise had ever seen one. 

Nonetheless, Richie sensed the hulking figure’s approach through the vibrations in the floor below. He was keenly aware of movement around him when his siblings were not, and before Pennywise was in the doorway, Richie was sitting up. 

It was as though something had reached inside his chest and squeezed all his organs as tightly as they possibly could. The demonic clown almost lurched forward with the feeling inside as he caught a look at Richie’s bloody nose and hurried over. 

“What have you done?” Pennywise asked sharply, without meaning to. “Why are you bleeding?” 

“Din’t make a mess.” Richie claimed, arms half-curled inward as he got ready to sulk. He was trying to make himself seem small even as he was angry…

Something in Pennywise’s stomach rolled and turned sharply, almost knocking the wind out of the clown. It was unexpected, but the Entity couldn’t help berating himself a moment later - he’d known of the neglect in Richie’s home, by Richie’s former sires, for as long as the child had existed outside his mother’s stomach. 

Pennywise didn’t say anything at first, only getting to his knees. He gently grasped the boy’s arms and pried them up so that he could take Richie into his arms. Richie’s eyes opened wide at the instant affection - he’d expected to be screamed at, at the very least. 

“I don’t CaRE if you made a mess.” His Pen grumbled, already wiping under Richie’s nose with the cuff of his costume sleeve. “You should have called for me when you fell. How many times do I have to tell you?” 

Richie’s mouth hung open as his face was cleaned (and the little tears that had streaked down his face were dried). He was plainly aghast, and his new father wanted to sigh at the unfairness of it - he’d had Richie for four months, now. He’d kept the child out of eye and earshot for that long, despite Richie being the rowdiest of his babies yet, and Richie still didn’t believe his sincerity when it was right there. Right in front of his face. 

“I was worried.” The alien said. “You scared Pennywise, you little devil.” 

Richie’s face crumpled again, but he fell forward and hugged the enormous clown for dear life. Pennywise could feel his gratitude and hear his muffled apologies through the silver over his chest, and ran a claw through the tiny boy’s scruffy hair with a long sigh. 


	32. Cry Yourself to Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parent!wise AU: The brood is all grown up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to everyone who has still been following and commenting on these little drabbles! I know I've been silent for a while, and I apologize. I'm trying to get to a place where I have a little more control in my life, and also there are a ton of other projects I've irresponsibly started :3 So it's kind of difficult to keep up with my dumb self as well.

“I am ETERNAL.” Pennywise spat. His frame shook against the opening beneath the cistern, against the seal to his only true hiding place. “I am EVeRyTHInG YOu eVer weRE AFRAiD OF.”

He grinned savagely, trying to frighten while he lay a heap on the ground. His clothes were tattered and torn, his hair in disarray, and though he could not see himself, Pennywise the Dancing Clown was sure he’d never looked more pathetic.

           The thought pitted against him, just like the eight figures standing over him. They wore weary expressions, some still angry while others were vacant of any strong emotions. Pennywise had tried multiple times - through the brutal arguments made against him to when he was literally spinning in place to throw them off himself - to dig into their minds. The channel from their minds to his had always been open. Always.

Yet, he scrambled for some footing in Bill’s mind, in Ben’s, Mike’s and Eddie’s… and Pennywise found nothing. It was more than frustrating now, while his body shuddered and dissolved like sand breaking with the tide of a seashore. Pennywise was crumbling, bits of him floating up and into nothingness.

“You’ll n-n-never get RiD of m-m-m-me.” The entity rumbled. “You’ll never b-be free.”

Bill looked his father dead in the eye, the sympathy reflecting within the young man’s soul. It was a cause for hope and a damning sign all in one. The sight made Pennywise want to bow his enormous head and find away out.

“Go to sleep, now.” Bill swallowed the lump in his throat, breaking eye contact when his gaze began to water. He could falter at any moment. “We don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

It was laughable - but they were no longer children. These were eight young adults staring him down, one being stronger than ten men and all-together? A veritable match for him. They’d thrown him around his own home, bitten and broken the bones of his favorite suit, torn him down until he was on his knees.

And Bill reminded Pennywise of himself, looping his arms around those in the group who were closest to him and backing away. They followed the new leader, promising protection.

_From It._

Bill’s actions were steady, though he looked ready to wilt. Having a caregiver as glorious and generous and all-powerful as It would make any being loyal to a fault. Bill was only having some trouble. His brood was only having some trouble. Deluded by the whims of the outside world on this little dirtball of a planet not worthy enough for them to set foot on.  

“Y-you… want to kill…” His eyes focused and unfocused; Pennywise’s lips trembled, clumsy around his vampire teeth and his lax tongue. His smile was vicious, but he went for pity next. “Kill… me…”

“We just want to leave.” Mike stated. It had been so long since any of the children had spoken a word through moving mouths and chattering teeth. Unlike their father, it seemed that they were adapting to the new skill.

His resolve was falling away, along with the rest of his body. The clown was dematerializing as it laid bare its shattered guise. Kill It by will, It hadn’t believed anything quite so powerful or capable of doing so, not on Earth.

But there was that little voice, often an echo or a whisper in the back of his mind and beyond reach of the Deadlights, screaming at him from every angle. _If they leave, it will kill you._

It jerked from side-to-side, vehemently rejecting the awful truth like it’d physically burned him. Perhaps, Richie had burned him to keep him down, or perhaps not. Was the pressure against his chest the work of Stanley or Beverly? Was this horrible tether to the corporeal plane of Ben’s doing?

Georgie’s face crumpled, and he was the first to try and step forward. “Pen.”

           “Stay.” Beverly and Bill spoke at once, either clinging to their little brother. Where Bill went, Georgie went; they were all getting farther away from It. Too far away, and becoming a blur of color and sound. “Sleep.”

Their footfalls were silent but for the imprints they left in their wake, screaming with that undesirable voice from within, born out of his bond with the brood. The brood deserting him.

“ _Stay. Stay. Stay._ ” Their chorus of voices were bleeding into one another until they sounded like a rushing current through rocks in a stream. Floating down the pathway they’d forged, diverging from It’s own. “ _Sleep. Sleep. Sleep._ ”

“You… no. No!” Invisible chains and the threat of disintegration kept Pennywise down and quavering. “Come back. Come back!”

He growled, head whipping back and forth as, with a wet hiccup from Georgie, his kids were stolen away and gone from view entirely. Saliva frothed down his chin and splattered against his cheeks, the notable markings of blood on his face already fading as though made from watercolor paint.

           “You can’t escape me! I’ll find you! I’ll find all of you! Yes, yes, and I’ll take you! I’ll take you back!” He screamed himself hoarse. “I’ll take you back to the weEDS, MYsElf!”

His threat was empty. The sewers were empty. It had never been this silent, not since It could remember. There had never been a time when Mikey wasn’t laughing, or Richie was bounding through the thrush of water all around them.

           It had never been his cold or bereft with Ben sitting nearby quietly. With Beverly’s arms wrapped around Pennywise’s shoulders, and Eddie hugging the life out of the clown. Pennywise had seen Stan and Bill chase after makeshift boats in the corner of his eye every day, and with Georgie not far behind them. The cistern wasn’t full unless it was deigned with the pleasant sounds of eight happy children gnawing on bones and through reddened flesh along with him.

           Pennywise saw their bright, hungry faces every moment of every day; never had he feared the shadows they’d leave behind if they’d ever leave in the first place.

They wouldn’t.

They couldn’t. They were **his**.

It wasn’t supposed to be alone. Not anymore.

He whispered. “Don’t lEAve. Don’t Go. I don’t waNt to s-Stay. LeT me coMe with you…”

The entity laughed uncontrollably, still twitching and writhing against the basin inside his underground. His brow furrowed, tweaking into a bow. Laughing and trembling, limbs pulled in until he was a ball on the ground.

“H-he thrusts-s his fists aga-ainst the p-post…” Pennywise mumbled to himself. “A-and s-s-still insists-s he s-sees the ghos-st…”

The words wouldn’t form without a shape or purpose, but by the time he was onto the next line of the poem, the clown was already crying. Tears fell from his glassy eyes as the half-eaten corpses of children and adults alike floated down as lightly as feathers through a calm sky. Pennywise hadn’t the strength left to care.  


	33. No Place Like Home (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parent!wise AU: After the Losers have left, life goes on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beware: Poorly-written dialogue ahead.

Her first thought was: _I want to go home._

 

* * *

 

 

“It’s a girl.” One of the nurses said, distantly.

 

The announced was followed by a ringing in her ears, and Beverly had to piece the man’s words together before she could derive any meaning from them. She was woozy while her hands still braced on either side of her bed handles, knuckles whiter than snow, and barely saw or heard what wasn’t ten feet in front of her.

            Beverly told herself, through the congealing air, to breathe after a few moments where her muscles cramped and her head felt heavy. No one, not the doctor nor either nurse, showed her any emotion beyond a crinkling of the eyes or a nod behind their masks. And she understood, though her heart ached at the quiet in her lonesome little room.

 

She swallowed. “W-where’s the baby?”

 

Silence.

 

            Bev tried again. “Where i-is she? Why isn’t sh-sh-she here?”

 

“She’s here, Ms. Marsh.” The doctor spoke. “We’re having just a bit of trouble waking her.”

 

Although she wasn’t fully conscious and couldn’t see that the ‘trouble’ was the fact that her newborn was suffocating, Beverly felt fear grip her exhausted body in an instant. Inside, she was screaming, praying, hoping against everything that she could will herself out of the bed and wake her baby. Something inside scorned the medics as her mind fought their words viciously. Her child was dying - she knew it, she knew her daughter was dying - and none of them could save her.

 

            “There’s nothing blocking her airway.” A nurse answered the doctor, head bowed over the blue-grey of the child’s skin.

 

The doctor was in Bev’s peripheral, hands on his hips. “Try chest compressions. Lay her on her stomach.”

 

Agony ripped through Beverly’s veins, but she’d only just managed to unclip her hands from the bedside and fallen back onto the pillow. She couldn’t move with the weight of the world caving in on her. Tears streamed down her face, as Beverly felt the life draining out of her then and there, ten times too powerful to cope with. Yet, Bev couldn’t manage even a wail.

 

* * *

 

“Ms. Marsh? Ms. Marsh?” Echoes sounded from over the barrier of sleep. Echoes of strong, steady voices and the frail cry of an infant not too far away. “Are you awake? Ms. -?”

 

            The wailing had startled a deep gasp from Beverly. She took in a lungful of air like she’d just breached an unforgiving tide and could breathe oxygen in again.

 

Dr. Bowen reared back in surprise then took a look at her and smiled with relief, his mask finally gone. “I’m sorry to wake you, dear. I’m glad I was able to, actually. You gave us a fright; you and your baby.”

 

“B-b -” Beverly stuttered. “The baby? Where is she?”

 

            In no time at all, the doctor was standing beside the woman with a little yellow bundle in his arms. “Your daughter is fine. Ten fingers and ten toes, and perfectly healthy.”

 

When he leaned down carefully to show the new mother, Bev hadn’t had the time to do more than brush her fingers over the baby’s tiny head. She took a moment to relish the soft and still-wet skin as an assurance that her child was truly there, not minding the screeching cries from the tiny mouth nearby.

 

“To tell you the truth, Ms. Marsh,” Dr. Bowen started. “We were having a hell of a time getting this little sleeping beauty to wake. She was silent for the longest time before she started hollering out of nowhere.”

 

He laughed. “It’s like something scared her awake. Ah, well… good thing. You’re both with us, and that’s as good a miracle as any.”

 

            The doctor’s words had Beverly smiling weakly, though she only had eyes for the little life that was held out to her. She and her daughter were parted too quickly, when a nurse called for the child to be put into a bassinet so that Beverly could rest.

            Bev very nearly told the old bint to shove it, but there was no immediate help for her limbs being too heavy to move, still. She followed the doctor as he strode over to the bassinet at the other end of the room and tucked the newborn inside before turning on the heating lamp above.

 

Bev didn’t bother to speak when the medics departed; Dr. Bowen wishing her a quiet goodnight.


	34. Sudden Swedish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Parent!wise/Barbara Kerry - yeah, if you're confused, I apologize. This is if Pennywise stole Barb to become the mother of his brood.

           Barbara’s heart froze in her chest at the sound of something crashing to the wooden floor. Instinctively, she opened her eyes and jostled from a state of half-sleep to see just what it was that had sounded in the dead of night.

          A wail sounded from the foot of her sleeping place, but when Barb tried to move she was instantly stunted by a plethora of dusty, frilly ruffles. The excess of cloth blinded her and made her choke, but arms dressed in the same ridiculously fine and olden silk bound her into it without hesitation. She tried to rear back, intent on escaping as sudden panic made goosebumps emerge on her skin.

“Let go!” Barbara said. Her voice rose beyond the unconventional gag. “Let go of me!”

          The deep-seated growl that answered her forced Barb to still once again. Her heart began to ache, as though the strain of remaining frozen was truly taking a toll. Sharp spines dug into her back slowly, the pressure building until she was whimpering at the pain. A second later and it was gone - the pinching at her flesh and the claws themselves. Barbara was released, or at least unwound, until she could lean back into more mobility than before.

          A light sweat broke out over her forehead as she saw the haunting grey attire of her nightmares so close. The beast that had stolen her from her apartment some nights ago had never wasted a moment to invade Barbara’s personal space, but being _held_ by it like this was daunting.

It still looked like a clown, when Barbara stared at its painted face. Even in a seemingly-deep sleep, where its shifting eyes were closed and it couldn’t burn a hole into her with its gaze, she could still imagine it reveal an inhuman smile in her direction. Any moment now, and the clown could open its jaws and snap her head clean off, of that Barbara was certain.

“Pen!” The wail was back, dripping with distress and desperation too dense to ignore.

          Barbara instantly whipped around in her spot, still chained to the terrible creature next to her. She could see some light within the darkness, - of the clown’s trailer, all the way down in the mainline of Derry’s sewer system - some sliver of light apart from the massive darkness that clouded her vision. And in the light there was a figure too small, one that became familiar with just a bit of thought on her part.

          It was one of the clown’s children. The littlest one - the baby of the group, that had taken an immediate and uncomfortable shine to Barbara as soon as she was dragged down there. The one that had taken to curling up on her lap to lightly doze… after filling up on his share of _human meat and muscle._

Fear and concern clenched at Barb’s stomach in equal parts. The concern was predictable for, even when terrified out of her mind, Barbara saw a tearful little boy nearby. His eyes were wide and his lower lip trembled in the low-light, and despite herself, Barbara was instantly tearing up, too.

          She fought the fear that had caused her hesitation, reaching out with a free hand to beckon the child over. “Oh sweetheart, it’s okay. C… come here.”

The child’s mouth went slack, (his name escaped Barbara) and by his expression, Barbara could tell he’d forgotten all about her. She supposed she understood, since children that were as young as this one were unobservant most of the time. Yet, it unnerved her. Barb’s mind instantly jumped to the conclusion that the clown’s… offspring had thought she’d been eaten just like the other humans (floating, falling, forced into her life until Barbara herself reeked of death).

“C-come here, sweetheart, it’s…” Barbara paused. Her gaze flicked to the clown that kept clinging to her.

          His grasp was lax, still. Almost lazy and heavy, like he really was asleep. Regardless, something inside Barbara protested that appearance. And she had no idea if this monstrosity would take too kindly to being ‘woken’, by either her or the kid. His temper was fierce and he appeared to be the kind of nightmare that could turn on a dime and destroy you if he simply felt like it.

Barbara gasped abruptly as one of the gnarled arms unwrapped itself from around her waist and drifted up into the air. The clown moved like a marionette, broad shoulder rolling in place soundlessly as he lifted his spindly fingers toward the child.

“ _Kom hit._ ” He rumbled from within. “ _Kom hit, barn. Var inte blyg._ ” 

It didn’t take more than those few words, said quietly and merely while going over Barbara’s head, to get the boy to bound forward. He crawled among all the rags and fabrics that formed the nest among herself the clown, and soon Barbara felt his little hands over her bare ankles. He scooted up until he was stampeding on Barbara’s torn dress and the clown’s costume.

The child’s sandy head popped up between Barbara and Pennywise, and he nuzzled among them to get more comfortable. In the process, his monster of a father had loosened the grip on Barb even more so, allowing for there to be space between them for the first time in forever. In return, Barbara felt like she could breathe again, with just an armful of the little boy who’d tossed and turned until he was gazing at her from beneath his lashes.

A giant hand ruffled through the child’s soft hair. “… Georgie…”

Barbara cast a quick glance in the clown’s direction, and as she’s suspected, his golden eyes were locked on her. The unnatural stare made Barbara want to run and hide, but it wasn’t an option.

“ _Say goodnight to your mother._ ” Pennywise commanded after the longest pause imaginable. Beneath his chin, Georgie’s brown eyes lit up with recognition and his tears went completely dry. 

“Mama.” The title was spoken soberly - making Barbara wonder, not for the first time, if any of these children could speak more than a handful of words. Whether her conjecture was true or not, she understood what he meant and gently brushed the hair from his gaze. 

“Goodnight.” Barbara replied.


End file.
